Judge channels Swift in tossed Metallica suit
The California Court of Appeal ruled that six concerts in South America canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic were not covered under Metallica’s insurance policy because a specific clause in the contract excluded losses related to “communicable diseases.”
Invoking lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song “All Too Well,” a California court this week dismissed Metallica’s lawsuit seeking more than $3 million in compensation from its insurance company for losses incurred from concert cancellations due to COVID-19.
The California Court of Appeal ruled on Monday, March 18, that six concerts in South America canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic were not covered under Metallica’s insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London because a specific clause in the contract excluded losses related to “communicable diseases.”
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band from the Bay Area argued that factors other than the coronavirus could have led to the concert cancellations, according to Billboard. However, Justice Maria Stratton in Santa Monica dismissed this argument as unrealistic given the severe impact of the disease at the time.
She wrote that it was “absurd to think that government closures were not the result of Covid-19.”
Stratton added, “To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We were there. We remember it all too well.’ There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
Metallica’s lawsuit is among many filed by musicians, venues and businesses seeking insurance compensation for losses due to the pandemic. But most of these lawsuits have been unsuccessful, with insurers often prevailing.
Many insurance policies, like Metallica’s, contain explicit exclusions for issues related to diseases. Other policies, especially those for physical establishments, typically require proof of “physical damage,” a challenging criterion to meet during a pandemic shutdown.
One of the most significant cases in the music industry involves Live Nation’s ongoing lawsuit against Factory Mutual Insurance Co., with the promotion company seeking coverage for over 10,000 shows and 15 million tickets canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. That case is pending.
Metallica sued Lloyd’s of London in June 2021 after the insurer denied coverage for losses from its South American tour, originally scheduled to begin April 15, 2020. The tour was postponed due to restrictions imposed by the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil in response to the escalating pandemic.
In May 2020, Metallica filed a claim for losses totaling $3,234,569 from the canceled shows, including $184,996 for the payroll of retained crew members. Lloyd’s of London promptly rejected the claim, citing the disease exclusion clause in its policy.
Despite Metallica’s arguments, a Los Angeles judge dismissed its case in December 2022, ruling that the cancellations were directly caused by travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Metallica appealed this decision, suggesting that a jury might attribute the cancellations to different reasons, given that venues reopened and shows were held in 2022 despite the ongoing presence of the virus.
But in her ruling Monday, Stratton stated that this argument failed to consider the current circumstances. She highlighted the significant changes by spring 2022, including the introduction of vaccines and more information about the coronavirus. “People were in a position to make a more accurate cost-benefit analysis of restrictions versus potential illness,” the justice wrote. “The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at that point, two years after COVID-19 was first discovered, does not in any way call into question their reasons for imposing travel restrictions early in the pandemic.”
The judge also dismissed several other assertions by Metallica, including the argument that the insurance policy did not encompass COVID-related cancellations due to its failure to mention the term “virus explicitly.”
The judge clarified that the definition of a communicable disease in the insurance policy did not specify any pathogens, nor did it restrict the exclusion solely to communicable diseases caused by particular pathogens.
The members of Metallica — guitarist Kirk Hammett, drummer Lars Ulrich, bassist Robert Trujillo, and singer and guitarist James Hetfield — appeared to take the loss in stride. On Wednesday, March 20, they performed a mashup of “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” at the 2024 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song honoring Elton John and Bernie Taupin at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.