OA543: Morgan Stringer Breaks Down The Astroworld Tragedy

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:17 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 543. I'm Thomas. That's Andrew Torrez. How are you doing, Andrew?

0:01:24 Andrew: I am fantastic and extra fantastic for today's episode.

0:01:28 Thomas: Absolutely, it's always great to have Morgan Stringer on for some pop law. Very excited that although

0:01:34 Andrew: I am going to learn stuff.

0:01:36 Thomas: Absolutely, although it is super grim topic, so not the most fun, but bear with us through. We're gonna be talking about the Astroworld tragedy. There's a lot of law involved in that given Travis Scott and a lot of the lawsuits happening. So we're to get the full breakdown with Morgan. Another reminder about Vulgarty for Charity. This is the, essentially the citation needed crew, which is of course the Puzzle and together. And last year's goal of $272,000. They're trying to get to $300,000 and that's all for a very good cause being donated to Modest Needs. If you want the details, go to citationpod.com slash vulgarity for charity. Oh, it's with some dashes in there. So tell you what, the link's in the show notes or Google it or whatever, because it's a great cause pause and find out how you can donate and get a fun roast for your donation.

0:02:30 Thomas: It's a lot of fun and it's, and it'S a really great effort by all of the, the folks at Puzzle and a Thunderstorm and Cognitive Dissonance combined. And it's something we've done for a couple of years now, and it''s always a lot fun and it. More importantly, it helps a ton of people. I think, I know we're both very proud to be a part of it.

0:02:48 Andrew: Hey everybody, this is a quick message to let you know that we watched about seven hours of the Rittenhouse trial. That was the direct and the cross-examination of Kyle Rittenhouse, and we broke it down, sometimes scene for scene, in a way that obviously we just can't do that on the main show. So, if you'd like our two-hour lamb, that's Lawed Awful Murders this month, head on over to patreon.com/law and subscribe at the $2 or more tier, and you can listen to this before the jury verdict comes out this week. And hey, if you're a student, a single mom, if you can't afford two bucks, send us an email at openarguments@gmail.com and we'll make the audio available to you. And if you cannot afford the two bucks but you'd rather not sign up for Patreon, that's fine. We'll continue to break down the law the way we always do on the show, okay?

0:03:36 Andrew: You know we're not a paywall. We just wanted to do something really, really special for our patrons, for those who support the show. And I have to tell you, I think if you are, you're going to really, really love the insight on what makes a good witness, how you impeach their testimony, whether this prosecutor is Mr. Magoo. And I also watched an extra bonus day of the testimony of the lawyer arguments breaking down the lesser included offenses and the jury instructions. And so you get kind of a mini deep dive on that at the end and so much more. We really think you're gonna love it. That's patreon.com/law, and if, if you're looking for Lawd Awful Movies this month, it is Lawd Awful Murders instead. We really think you're going to enjoy it.

0:04:19 Thomas: Right, well, that said, let's hop on with Ace Associate Morgan Stringer and find out what's going on with this, uh, this Astroworld Festival tragedy. Let's all get to

0:04:29 Clip: Actually, I was going to stay in my office tonight and work on my law blog. Of course, the Bob Loblaw Law Blog. Wow. You, sir, are a mouthful.

0:04:37 Thomas: Back on the show is Ace Associate, Morgan Stringer, with some pop law. How you doing today, Morgan?

0:04:44 Morgan: I'm doing all right. I am actually about to head to Oxford and go to college game day. So I'm very excited about that.

0:04:50 Thomas: On that happy note, let's talk about some seriously disturbing news. Travis Scott, that concert, that deadly concert killed now, actually, I think as we're recording, sorting, I believe. So it's a ninth person died. Deadly concert. Are the legal questions around here that we want to talk about?

0:05:06 Morgan: Yes. So I knew as soon as I saw this news kind of unfolding, just scrolling around on Twitter on Friday night, I saw, you know, videos from people who were at the concert, tweets from people were at the concert about how there was lax security there and things of that nature. So I knew, from based on that, that there were going to be lawsuits, especially because, you know, in that there were, at time, eight people who were killed, and it looked like there was a night, and, you know, as more information trickled out, I knew there was going to be a lawsuit, and I was absolutely correct. On, on Monday morning, there was a race between personal injury lawyers in Houston to get to that courthouse. There have now been over 20 lawsuits filed related to this Astroworld incident.

0:05:46 Thomas: Yeah. So who all gets named in lawsuits like that? Travis Scott, you know, the venue, the every... Is it Andrew's typical theory of sue everybody and let God sort sorted out yeah I

0:05:51 Andrew: Oh,

0:05:57 Morgan: So which is also what I was taught in towards, sue as many people as you can for as much money as you can, is what I Was taught at Ole Miss Law. Now, and I used to, before I got with Andrew, I was with a personal injury firm. Now we mostly did defense, but we did a little bit of plaintiff's work, too. So I am familiar with this arena a little bit, but, you know, nothing to the degree of suing somebody as famous as Travis Scott. So I guess for some listeners, I will talk about who Travis Scott is exactly and what we mean when we talk about Astroworld. So Astrowworld is an annual music festival.

0:06:26 Andrew: Thank you so much.

0:06:26 Thomas: Was gonna say for some listeners and andrews and thomas's actually no one here knows who these people are except you

0:06:32 Morgan: Yeah, so yeah, I thought that might be the case because, Astroworld is actually an annual music festival that's hosted by Travis Scott, he is from Houston so he does this music festival where he has you know a pretty big lineup this year actually it was supposed to be SZA, Tame Impala, Bad Bunny and actually Earth Wind and Fire who um I hope listeners know who that is okay, yes, so, um, and it, it was Travis Scott, and then he had a surprise appearance, uh, with Drake, which we'll get into a little bit here, but, so, last year it was actually canceled because of COVID, so this year, you know, they came back, you know, they limited it to 50,000, apparently the arena can't actually hold 200,000, but when tickets went on sale, they sold out in 30 minutes, so Travis Scott is actually hugely popular, his real name is like actually Jacques Berman Webster of second, but that's not a cool

0:06:54 Andrew: Nice. I've heard of them.

0:07:27 Thomas: Whoa

0:07:27 Morgan: Rapper name yeah that's not

0:07:28 Thomas: I don't know that's a Better. Okay, maybe I don't know rap, but that sounds way cooler than Travis Scott. I would have thought that you'd go with that name. Okay, I don't know, it's the reason I'm not a famous rapper, I guess. Yeah.

0:07:29 Morgan: Yeah.

0:07:41 Morgan: But he is that

0:07:41 Andrew: It's the only reason,

0:07:42 Thomas: It's only that's the one thing is I don't have a good name

0:07:42 Andrew: Thomas.

0:07:46 Morgan: Yeah, you got to get the name right, and then you got to hit your sound cloud set up, and I think Thomas could hit it big time. Uh, I saw something on Twitter that somebody said being with a straight man is kind of terrifying because he could decide to be a rapper at any moment, but that also applies for sure. But yeah, so Travis Scott, a lot of people were saying, you know, had reactions to several of the, and several of the planets actually are minors. And so one thing I've seen, you know, people say is, okay, well, why were kids at this concert? So Travis Scott is actually hugely popular with these audiences. So he had a hit song off his third album called Sicko Mode that he did with Drake. In 2020, he actually gave a virtual performance through Fortnite, night which got over 27 million views.

0:07:59 Thomas: Substitute that in with podcaster, and I think that also applies, oh yeah

0:08:31 Morgan: And Yeah, Fortnight is obviously like, that's marketed towards like younger people and kids. He also has hits Heist in a Room and Goosebumps, and he is in a relationship with Kylie Jenner of Kardashian Jenna fame. They actually have one kid together and another on the way, which again, this just proves how there's only like 300 famous people, you know what I mean, like they all like yeah exactly There's a Kardashian link to every story. It's, instead of Kevin Bacon, it should be, you know, the Kardashians, so Yeah, Travis Scott, he's very good at branding and collaborating. He actually had his own limited edition McDonald's meal combo, which was the first celebrity endorsed McDonald's meal

0:08:31 Thomas: Yeah and half of them are Kardashians yeah yeah oh Now: I know who you're talking no I'm kidding

0:09:09 Morgan: Yeah since Michael Jordan. Yeah, yeah, the Travis Scott meal, yeah, exactly. You may not know from his music, but you do know of him or have like interacted with like at least one of his products, right? Whether that be Fortnight, the, the McDonald's meal, the, you know, he had a collaboration with Nike. He's had collaborations with Dior. It's, he's very good at this kind of collaboration type, type deal. So there have actually been past incidents that I think will have also been more talked about as this has kind of unfolded. So Travis Scott kind of has a history of sort of promoting chaos and encouraging his fans to sort of rage, which is kind of brought like the mosh pit scene sort of to the rap performance, which is something that I feel like a lot of people probably hadn't seen before or been familiar with. Which, but you know, is fine.

0:09:56 Morgan: That happens. It's fine. But, you know, usually eight people don't end up dead from it. But in 2015, actually, at the Lollapalooza Music Festival, he was arrested and charged of disorderly conduct because he told concert attendees to ignore security guards and rush the stage.

And he did this again in northwest west Arkansas and was also arrested for it, and he's been sued before by a fan who fell from a balcony who claims it was a crowd rush, which is what, or a crowd surge, which is probably what happened here, and then he ended up being dragged on stage and uh got pretty severe injuries from that. So there is a history with this kind of, um, thing.

And then also, at that day of the incident, um, it was about 2 p.m., and I remember seeing videos, you can, you can see them on Twitter or, you know, online, and there are fans that, I guess they don't have tickets, but they rush through the security gates and you can see them knocking down the metal detectors, things like that. You see some security guards sort of half-heartedly kind of go after some of these kids, right, and some of them are trying to trip them, but they succeed in catching basically nobody. So this thing was, was kind of a mess to begin with, and then it just kind of escalated from there.

0:11:07 Andrew: Let me just, you know, uh, old guy clarify on crowds, because I know what a mosh pit is, right? Like, and from a legal perspective, right, the distinction that immediately comes to mind is when you climb into a mosh pit, like, you know what the hell's going on, right? Like, that's people throwing themselves into each other with maximum force, right? And so I could see a legal argument of assumption of risk, right? Like, you know, you climb into an amateur boxing ring, you know someone's about to punch you. You climb onto a mosh pit, you know somebody likely on ecstasy is going to throw themselves at you for the next five minutes. The crowd surge is that like the entire audience, audience Like, what, happens?

0:11:48 Thomas: Well, turns out I did a deep dive on this, I'm going to talk for about 10 minutes, so I did horrifying deep dive, because this, this blew my mind, as I, there, think Morgan alluded to, there have been a number of these incidents in the past and they were not that well understood until, like, like they've actually opened up, there's like a field of study of like crowd dynamics and this kind of thing. And I want to actually really push back on the mosh pit, anything that should be pretty much zero percent of the discussion. It turns out it's, it's really, it's the most horrifying topic I think I've looked into in a while, but also really interesting, which

0:11:50 Andrew: Oh. No.

0:12:23 Andrew: Huh.

0:12:23 Thomas: Is that it's basically they had this expert on the on the podcast talking about it. And then I went and watched this documentary on like one of the worst events of this ever, which was Hillsborough. I don't know if you looked into that, Morgan. But yeah, that was in England. It was a soccer match. That Was a high death count. It's like 95 or 96 people died in that one. There's an ESPN 30 for 30 on it. And it's gosh, it's grim. It's grim watching. But what blew my mind about that is you see some of the same things happening here, which is people start to blame the victims and start to talk about like, what did they do?

And actually, it really comforted me in some ways, because it's good to know that police are shit everywhere. Because in England, the police in charge of the security for the event, immediately after, you know, almost 100 people are dead, they started talking about how like, oh, the fans were too drunk, they were too rowdy, they're coming in here drinking, and they totally victim blamed. And as it turned out, it was entirely the police's fault for not managing the event correctly. Because as

0:12:34 Morgan: Yes yes

0:13:23 Thomas: This scientific expert talked about, which is mind blowing, it's basically, Andrew, what you do is you can basically treat human beings like, like it's fluid dynamics, you know, like, it'S just like, well, if you have X number of people, and you put them in this certain amount of space, and there's nowhere to go, this will just happen. Like, it's almost like you can look at it like not even humans anymore. It's almost, like, we're a fluid. It's really mind-blowing because what happens is if we get – there's too many people. There's some sort of surge, some sortof event that causes people to rush toward one direction. There's a pressure wave that is just, like, , inescapable. Like, you squeeze up against each other so much that people can't breathe anymore. People's hearts stop. People get all kinds of gruesome injuries, and it's entirely, uh, a question of did you manage the crowd correctly, and did, that was there an appropriate like pressure outlet.

And so it's nothing to do with mosh pits, like that's not anything that, that'snot where, the where the anything would happen. Like, yeah, you someone could hypothetically get injured in a mosh pit, but all it takes is inappropriate crowd management, and, and if there's an, if there's something that gets everyone's attention, gets them to either, either rush a stage or, you, somebody, for whatever reason, it gets the crowd acting in a certain way, then that pressure wave, it really just squeezes people to death.

0:13:47 Andrew: Oh.

0:14:40 Thomas: It's the most gruesome thing. It's just sheer numbers, like, did you manage the crowd correctly? Did you have the correct outlets and the correct, like if you have certain breaks or gating or whatever it it is that like breaks up the group so that it's, there's not this risk. It's entirely on the fault of the people who should have managed this event properly. And it's not the victim's fault whatsoever. And I hope nobody is left with that impression. That's the biggest takeaway from this like deep dive I went on that was so like depressing, but I couldn't stop reading about it.

0:15:09 Morgan: Yeah, and I wanted to make that point too, and I'm really glad that you went into that, because I was going to say the most likely cause here is compressive asphyxia, which I did a deep dive into, and yeah, Thomas, it's, it's very grim. So that is when, again, it's the crowd is so tightly packed that you cannot breathe. Uh, one witness said if you happen to have your arms up, you know, in the air waving them around, like, you just don't care, while this happened, then your arms were stuck, you could not move them, they were going to stay up.

It did not matter what you did and and it's like a domino effect, right, and it has nothing to do with the mosh pit, but I did want to mention that, you know, because I have seen some people already coming to Travis Scott and the manager's defense, saying things like, oh, well, he encourages fans to rage and that's no excuse, right? Well, we have seen, you know, there have been videos that have gone around that have gone viral, such as from past concerts, such as from Linkin Park, where, you know, he sees some people fall and he says, hey, we need to watch out for each other, we're stopping the show right now, we're going to make sure everybody's okay, and then we're gonna play the song again, right?

That has happened with multiple artists, um, people, everybody from Adele to Billie Eilish, you know, when somebody falls out, they, you know, know stop the show, assess, make sure everything's okay. And some people have said, well, maybe Travis Scott didn't know.

There's video that shows that he did know, that that he was aware of something going on, and he just said, oh, y'all cool, you know, throw your middle fingers up in the air if y'al cool, and then he just continued on and brought Drake out, right? Meanwhile, people are dying, so

0:15:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:36 Andrew: My gosh so

0:15:38 Thomas: It's horrible.

0:15:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:34 Thomas: Well, here's the weird thing though. So I used to think, do you remember the Pearl Jam one, Andrew, like in the 90s? I know you hate grunge, but there was an incident in a concert there. And I always used to think it was like, oh, someone must fall and then it's like a trampling. But that actually, I believe that isn't really what goes on. Like, I always thought that that's what the problem was. And so I actually am wondering how much Travis Scott will be liable here, here. I think that like, when you look at some of these examples of this crowd crush, this like compression thing that happens, it's people get kind of stuck in place. It's entirely possible. I'm not like a, I don't know Travis Scott. I'm not trying to defend the guy or anything, but had, you know, when he's got in-ear monitors going, so he can't really hear anything and he's doing his show.

0:17:20 Thomas: It actually doesn't seem that outlandish to me that he would have not necessarily noticed what was happening. And that's just prima facie. I haven't seen like examples of, you know, right.

0:17:28 Morgan: Yeah that's a good Point. Now, he did have two security guards come on stage and tell him something. Now, I don't know what that communication was, there's no way to know, it could have been something, you know, that had nothing to do with what was happening. And also, Houston, the city of Houston was aware, and they actually declared this a mass casualty event, but the show was not ended until about 40 minutes later.

0:17:50 Thomas: Really?

0:17:50 Morgan: And yes yes

0:17:51 Thomas: Wow.

0:17:51 Andrew: Okay I I wanna Put a pin in that, because I, I have so many questions to ask about that, but, but first, I, I guess I wantto sit in the Thomas chair for a minute and ask the question this way, because the news reports I've seen, so this, I think, kind of of responds to, uh, both what you were saying, uh, Morgan, and also to the idea of the sort of the crowd crush is a fluid dynamics kind of thing. So this is just, I'm reading this, is a, okay, admittedly it's a New York Post, uh, article.

0:17:52 Morgan: Yes.

0:18:21 Andrew: So, I but I, I pulled it, I pulled up because it's inflammatory, right, because I, I want to get your both of your responses to what to me seems to be the kind of of like typical Twitter hot take, right? So here's what the post says, and this is from the, six is from a couple days ago, it says, um, videos shot at Travis Scott's astro world Festival Friday night appears to show fans desperately trying to get the concert to stop as the crush went on for about a half an hour before the music was stopped, leaving eight people dead and scores more injured, and Thomas, I think as you pointed out, there's... there's been a ninth death death.

0:18:20 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, a ninth. Yeah, just died.

0:18:56 Andrew: Uh, yeah, today, uh, Scott apparently noticed an ambulance moving through the crowd, stopped performing for a few minutes, then promised to, quote, "make this mother effing ground shake," end quote, and resume the show. It's unclear if he heard any of the crowd's, the crowd's please, uh, another 11 second post starts with a close-up of Houston police officers and medics attending to a fan on the ground, while the audio captures a line of Scott's.

Okay, so, so the salient parts out of that seems to be, uh, fans are chanting, uh, "stop the show," right? Uh, and that's going on for a long, long time, and it looks as though there's some kind of acknowledgement from the stage, right, and then, you know, the, "we're gonna make the MF and ground shake" or whatever, so I guess my, my, my two sort of questions slash talking points, and Morgan, you can, you can take it from here, the, um, suggests a little different, right, that like this, that that there wasn't kind of like a single flash point and everything went crazy, but rather, you know, sort of slow build over a half an hour, uh, and also that that there was at least some awareness of what's going on on Scott's part.

0:20:07 Morgan: So there there was, but again, it's like, did he know, you knowthat people were literally dying, did he think it was one fan, did he knows eight, you know, did hethink somebody had maybe just passed out, the the medics had them. And the thing that I also wanted to point out, and these lawsuits are suing for, you know, gross negligence and negligence. So gross negligance being, you are aware of what's going on and you still go forward, right? So it's a little worse than just negligence, like, oh yeah, you should have, you hired better security. So the Houston police have really made a big show about, oh, well, they hired more security guards for this than they did the World Series.

There there were 500 police officers on duty that night, and there were, you know, they hired all these security guards, that's great that you hire all these security guards, but did they know what they were doing, or did you just hire a bunch of 19 year olds, you know, for nine dollars an hour, and also one of the witnesses, who she was a woman who actually did pass out, and they were, they actually the fans had to crowd surf some people to areas of safety, so it wasn't just, oh, the fans all let loose and they're a bunch of sociopath monsters, that people were trying to help each other, and

0:20:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah of

0:20:28 Andrew: So

0:21:15 Thomas: Course.

0:21:16 Morgan: So yeah, like, but the, you know, a lot of the media is, you know, obviously trying to victim blame, like you were talking about, Thomas, which I'm really glad you brought up that point about how this has happened throughout history, this kind of victim blaming immediately, and they crowd surfed this woman over, and she, you know, recovered, and she said she was an RN, and the medics asked her for help, and she says some of these medics did not even know how to take a pulse, they didn't, they, they were doing CPR on people who did not need CPR, and they were failing to do CPR on people who needed it.

So it was very obvious that there was some kind of failure to do some triage. They did not have appropriate precautions. And also the Houston police made it a point to say, oh, this wasn't overcrowded. This venue could have held 200,000 people, but there's only 50,000 people. I say, if I'm the plaintiff's attorney, this is my argument. I say that does show negligence because you should have had an easier time handling that crowd. You should have has some precautions. It's like Thomas was saying with the fluid dynamics, gating, some kind of pressure valves.

0:22:01 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

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0:25:44 Thomas: Roman ready. The interesting thing about the Hillsborough incident is top line number of 50,000 actually doesn't really tell you anything, because that entire casualty event in Hillsborough was in two sections. Of There was an area behind the goal, essentially, at the soccer match, that was like a gated in area that was like two sections. And they just let too many people into that area. But that's but a fraction of the people who were at the match, it so it really doesn't matter that top line number, it matters how many people were shepherded into a given space, and like who's allowed to be in this space, how many people are in this dense, you know, so it could be just a pocket, could be where the entire thing is. This is again speculation, just in general about these kinds of things. So one thing, so here's my Thomas hot take, if you want a Thomas his hot take.

0:26:34 Thomas: I think the focus on Travis Scott is maybe inappropriate. don'T know. Now there could be other facts that come to light that would make that more appropriate. Like if Travis Scott himself is in charge of like, you a bunch of stuff. Uh, and also the fact that like, if he did encourage a rush to the stage, that kind of thing might just be something that we should not allow anymore. Like that should be looked at as too dangerous a thing to even and allow like any sort of rush to the stage, but apart from that, as somebody who is a world famous rapper, like myself, no, as somebody has done very, you know, limited amounts of performing and stuff, I, it cannot be on the performer, like, no matter what it is.

I, I've only done very small crap with theater and whatever, but it cannot the performer's responsibility, you know, the performer of anything, whatever you're talking about, let alone a giant concert with so many moving parts and loud music and all that stuff, their focus should be on performing. They have a thing they have to do. And, and I don't know about rap, but like there's, there are performances that take enormous focus, like enormous, like your entire focus.

0:26:56 Morgan: Yes. Oh, absolutely.

0:27:35 Thomas: Is going to be into that performance. This is absolutely not the performer's job. This, like, why didn't this, the lights go up? Why didn't the music just cut off? Why Didn't the, you sound get turned off, the amps turned off like that. That's the kind of thing you would need. You would need somebody with the authority who is not in the middle of trying to perform, something that can take all of your attention.

You need somebody who's focused on security, focused on safety to be able to flip that switch and say like, there's a major safety situation going on. We have to stop the show. And that, you know, like I know it's easy to, you know, look at videos and say, oh, should Travis Scott have noticed? Well, okay, there is an ambulance. Maybe somebody, now, you got dehydrated in the back of the crowd. Like all that stuff that you've described is the kind of stuff that I bet happens at every single show, you and again, maybe there'll be examples that that doesn't hold up on, but from the limited stuff you've said, you know, there's an ambulance. Okay. Well, who knows? Maybe an elderly person had a heart attack back there. People, honestly, the show goes on when those things happen. Like that's that's the truth of performing, or maybe it's a minor thing. Could be.

So Like as far as Travis Scott knows, he's not going to stop the show for that necessarily. And people trying to get his attention, I bet you people are trying to get His attention all day, every day at everything He ever does. He's a famous musician, So putting you the focus on Him, again, unless there's facts that I don't know about, it seems a little bit inappropriate. And there ought to be, unless He's responsible for not having hired the security or, you know, whatever.

0:28:17 Morgan: Exactly.

0:29:02 Thomas: His manager, I think, would be more likely to be be somebody, whoever handles the event, that's where the focus needs to be. The people who should have not only, it's not just hiring security, as you point out, Morgan, it is also having the correct procedures, having training, having all that stuff. That's where the liability ought to be, and I think if we're focusing on what victim blaming, that is bad, but also should this rapper who is in the middle of performing have noticed? I don't know. I feel like that's maybe not the right place to put this hmm

0:29:33 Morgan: Yes. And I agree. And Then I wanted to get back into sort of the things that Andrew pointed out about the parties. Right. Right. So all these lawsuits sue Live Nation. They just named Travis Scott as a party. Right. And, you know, say, you know, when you do some fact finding, you are going to find more of like, what did he know? What is what are his responsibilities there? And I think you do get into complicated questions of, you know, he does have past behavior of, you know, encouraging fans to ignore security. You know. Did that happen here? I don't know yet. But, you know, that's something that we're going to find out. But also, Travis Scott is not wanting to, you there's been some hot takes about, oh, he doesn't care about his fans. Yes, he does. They make him tons of money. Like, why would you have this secret? Like, there have been, of course, because there's been conspiracies about this, right, that

0:29:34 Andrew: Yeah.

0:29:40 Thomas: Good yeah

0:30:17 Morgan: Oh, this was part of some satanic ritual or whatever. I'm like, not, what does he have to gain from killing his fans why

0:30:20 Thomas: They always think the satanists want to kill their own fans yeah they almost that's always the theory yeah then they don't have any money anymore yeah oh

0:30:24 Morgan: And then there's and Then there's been another crazy conspiracy theory that came out that, again, Thomas, it goes to what what you were saying about not trusting the police, the Houston police came out and tried to make it sound like there was some crazy fan out there that was stabbing people with drugs. And that's what made people pass out.

0:30:42 Thomas: My god oh

0:30:41 Andrew: I saw I wanted to ask you about that

0:30:45 Thomas: Wow

0:30:45 Morgan: Yes. So there was a, um, it came from the Houston police that one of their officers was stabbed in the neck with a needle, like on dune. And he just fell out and he was revived with, uh, Narcan. So, you know, somebody was over there, They're, you know, stabbing people with a fentanyl gun or I don't know. You know, I don'T how they were finding veins on people because, you know, it kind of requires that. You don'T just stab people randomly in the skin. And then they said this and I was like, this is so, yeah, and this was so weird to me. So I was, like, I

0:30:50 Thomas: Well

0:31:10 Andrew: Right yeah yeah subcutaneous injection of fentanyl different

0:31:21 Morgan: DON'T think this happened.

0:31:21 Thomas: That fentanyl is brutal stuff I mean for one you only have to like come into minor contact with that stuff and you could totally pass out by the way but like why would that be at the at the con why would that be happening is that just a made-up thing or what and

0:31:32 Andrew: Story

0:31:31 Morgan: Well, yes, it was made up because today The Houston police chief said, well, we got some bad information. Actually this officer was just, you know, trying to, I guess, restrain somebody at the concert and they ended up getting punched and they passed out and I Was like but that is a completely different story than I was stabbed with drugs where did that come from and why did you report it like that just say this is under investigation we you know we're still investigating this and move on don't try to you know fuel

0:31:35 Thomas: Oh My god yeah it

0:31:52 Andrew: Than yeah yeah okay

0:32:02 Thomas: This is incredible it I had no idea there were this many parallels to the Hillsboro situation, like, yeah, honestly, it's again, it, I don't recommend it's depressing watching, but if you, if you look into that, the same thing, this was 1989 in England and the police told the same lie, like this same sort of lies, they talked about how like they were over served, it was a drunk rush of people who ignored the security, and they even, police told lies in that situation, again, this is Hillsboro, not this current situation, but they told lies about like we were trying to revive people and we were, you know, urinated on and kicked out, and just they made up all this stuff and that became the story for years. By the way, it wasn't until like decades later that finally they set the record straight and were like, no, this was entirely the police's fault. So don't buy into this crap, everybody, like, they, this seems to be the pattern, like making up these wild stories to do anything but put the blame where it ought to be.

0:32:55 Morgan: And I think that we are going to have that, like, you know, there's going to, I think that these are going to settle, obviously. I think, um, Travis Scott has made some moves to, you know, pay funeral costs, he's said that, you know, fans who are in attendance can get a free month of Better Help, which has caused some discourse on the Twitter, that but yeah, there's, there, there has been some different, you know, hot takes about, oh, this is all Travis Scott's fault, or, oh, this, you know, the police, we, there was some crazy person stabbing people with drugs, and I think this is, you know, your classic negligence. I think that Live Nation and, um, more, yeah, Scoremore, uh, productions, they failed to essentially hire competent security.

Like, when you have people rushing the gates and your security guards are making like half-hearted attempts to sort of stop people, but not really, that tells you something already is going wrong. The fact that they're that incompetent to do that. And then they can't, you know, you have medics that can't tell whether to, you know, how to take a pulse, and they have to ask for assistance from people. It's, yeah, it, very obvious here to me.

0:33:15 Andrew: You Yeah, I think those are really critical facts that, we're, you, not present in the intentionally salacious New York Post story that I read to prep for this. But let me, let me ask the question this way.

Suppose, right, right, you have a situation where a significant chunk of the negligence is going to be laid at the feet of Live Nation, of the event organizers, right, that is failure to, you know, appropriately cordon off the space, allowing too many people into a certain area, having under-trained staff, all of the things that we've just talked about that contribute to the structural factors. Um, how does that interact with the, um, the artist-facing factors that we talked about?

Right, to be, assume, uh, for example, that that there is some evidence that comes out that, uh, that Travis Scott, you know, did hear, right, you know, sort of notwithstanding Thomas's public policy prescription of like we shouldn't require artists to be listening to the crowd, or we should be skeptical that artists can even hear the crowd.

And I, and I think that that second point is kind of well taken, but suppose just as a hypothetical that, um, the evidence comes out that, yeah, Travis is like, oh, yeah, I did, I heard people, you know, chanting stop the show, but they, they do that all the time, and like, this is just kind of what my shows are like, and, and, uh, you know, so when I said, you know, we're gonna make some, you know, mother effing noise, uh, that's just, you know, that's just what I do at my shows, right. And suppose the jury does assess, like, some, some blame to that. Does this become like a contributory negligence kind of problem where,

0:35:33 Andrew: You know, the victims are going to get some, something out of Live Nation, or is it like a joint and several where, you know, the, the victims will be compensated first and then there'll be subsidiary lawsuits between Live Nation and Travis Scott to kind of figure out who owes what.

0:35:47 Morgan: So the subsidiary lawsuits, I think those might be a bit out of a question because Texas is actually a modified comparative negligent state. So that means if you are a plaintiff and you are found to be more than 50% at fault for your own injuries, then you do not recover because you're more than, half you at fault. So yeah, so I don't think you're going to see subsidiary lawsuits, but I also think that might be why there's a bit of victim blaming going on here, right?

0:36:14 Morgan: Because then you can, you Know, but again, that, that is applied to the the plaintiff. The crowd is not the plaintive. It's, you know, the individuals that are suing, right? So, you can blame the actions of a crowd, but those are other people. You're still on the hook. Now, I think what's going to happen, though, is personal injury, especially when you have these or any high-profile litigation involving celebrities or that get this amount of public attention, you're not just fighting in the courtroom, but you're also fighting in the court of public opinion right andrew so

0:35:56 Andrew: Oh, right. Yep. Hmm. Hmm, yeah. Hmm.

0:36:12 Thomas: Yeah, you

0:36:45 Morgan: It doesn't, you know, you can, we can have these, you know, the Thomas's hot take about how Travis Sky, you know, it's not, it should not be on the performer, right? And I think that that's right, but if everybody's reading this New York Post article and saying, you know, screw that guy, that's still, you know, a battle that you're having to fight. So the best thing to do there would be, you know, essentially to get out your checkbook, honestly. And I think That's what's going to happen here because he does not want to be in litigation with his fans.

And I guarantee you, he's going to put pressure on Live Nation to not be in litigation with his plans either. And, and think that this is also very bad for Live Nation because they're getting a lot of heat for this about why haven't you hired more security or better trained security? You know, they're going to start asking questions. Could this happen again? You know what, could this have been avoided? And the ages of the victims too, I think are something to account for. I think you have people that were injured and died from the ages ages of nine. And I think the oldest

0:37:08 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah,

0:37:40 Morgan: Victim I know that died was 27. 27. That is insanely young and tragic and awful. I mean, it's tragic when anybody dies, but especially if you are having, you know, kids die, that's awful. And you do not want that to go to a jury, especially. So they're going, they're gonna to settle. This is going to sell. This is not going to be some trial of a century stuff, but I think it's just going to be, you know, who is getting their checkbook out and for how much. I think there's just going to Be the questions here. And then also, I think that there is going to be investigation. But again, I don't trust the Houston police on this, because they've already told us wild tales about, you Know, somebody stabbing people with fentanyl. So I don't know where you know if we're ever going to really find out exactly what happened until years later, or if this is going To unfold quickly. I imagine that, you You know, I hope that somebody does a thorough investigation and that probably is only going to happen through this litigation, very, over

0:37:55 Andrew: Yeah, yeah So which lawsuits have been filed already? Yeah, I know you said there was a race to the Yeah.

0:38:39 Thomas: Said like 20-something, didn't you?

0:38:40 Morgan: 20, over20. So I have read 18 of them. They're very cookie cutter. They have, they're not very specific about the injuries and what happened. And I, I don't practice in Texas, so I don'T know, maybe this is frowned upon. But for me, if I know that there are going to be eyeballs on a complaint that I draft, I'm going to try to, you know, use that to be a little bit more creative in my complaint drafting. So, you Know, I've got to mention things like, you Now, plaintiff was a college student whenever, you Knew, because I used to work in Oxford. I would always throw that in there, right, to get a little Bit more of, Know, Sympathy You for a plaintiff in a way, but because especially I Knew that there's eyes on that, and that's something that people can empathize

0:38:41 Thomas: Yeah. Let

0:38:41 Andrew: OK. Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:39:21 Morgan: With, right?

0:39:21 Thomas: Me ask both of you, just as a purely legal question, you talked about the rush to file lawsuits. What exactly is the rush? Is there some, not that I'm saying you take a year or something, but these are filed immediately. Is there a reason, is there a legal reason or a practical reason why it's like, we have to get this out there yesterday versus like, okay, let's take a week, let's make sure we draft the thing properly. Is there some pressing need to get it right away? Is it a first come first serve basis or something?

0:39:22 Morgan: Right?

0:39:51 Morgan: No, I think it's twofold. So I have actually, there's one lawsuit in particular that's very interesting. This is the Villanueva versus ASM Global. That's another one of the vendors at this concert. And they name, of course, you know, everybody you could name, all the vendors basically, but it actually incorporates a motion for a temporary restraining order in the complaint saying that they want the judge to grant an injunction specifically against Travis Scott to keep him from deleting video pictures, emails, and messages because because they're worried, essentially, I guess, that he's going to delete things off of his cell phone. So I thought that was very interesting.

0:40:26 Morgan: And again, I, yes, probably prep or, you know, I guess Snapchats that he'd done during the show or something. I'm not sure exactly what they believed that he would have, or maybe messages that he had sent afterwards or right before, you know. I guess to show his level of awareness of what was going on or thinking that maybe he He had some, you know, evidence about, you know, I guess the security that had been hired or things of that nature, but I thought that was very interesting, but yeah, usually what you'd want to do is I assume that the first thing these attorneys did, and I assume that they have gotten probably hundreds of these litigation hold letters, is yeah, you send a litigation hold letter basically saying we anticipate this is going to go to litigation, so basically don't delete any of your emails. Because a lot of people on Twitter also were very crass about the, oh, y'all were calling and personal injury lawyers before the bodies were even

0:40:25 Thomas: What would be on his cell phone? Oh, just like the prep of the event or something. Okay yeah yeah

0:41:18 Morgan: Called you know this is a money grab do you not think live nation's first call was to their lawyers because If you don't if you think that their first call wasn't to their legal team as the event was happening, then you're an idiot.

0:41:32 Thomas: Well You're totally right, one of themes of Andrew's coverage on the show has been the again it's more victim blaming, as though there's this environment where, like, "Oh, these poor bazillion dollar companies, like, they just face too many lawsuits," and when in reality what happens is they're never punished enough. Sometimes you'll get judgments, and even those judgments will be like reduced by a judge somewhere along the line, that doesn't get a bunch of coverage. So yeah, that's an inappropriate attitude. The only way change happens, the only way that, you know, safety protocols might be put in place, if indeed they aren't already, is by having big lawsuits like this. That's the onlyway to get people to treat this more seriously.

0:42:11 Morgan: I think, I think that's absolutely right, that I mean, this is something that has gotten a lot of people's attention and hopefully it does improve people's, uh, hiring of security practices. You know, not that that should be necessarily on the performer, but on whatever company, such as Live Nation or Score More or whoever it may be, that is in charge of putting on the concert and in charge of vetting and hiring security and medics and doing things like making sure medics can do CPR, you know, basic things like that that should have been done, instead of just, you know, hiring whoever for, you know, the lowest bottom dollar. And, yeah, I think that's what's going to have to happen here.

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0:44:22 Andrew: I mean, you know, if you meet, go to moinkbox.com slash OA right now and you'll get free ground for a year. That's a limited time offer. And you'll get one year of the best ground beef you'll ever taste. So M-O-I-N-K-B-OX.com slash OA. Moinkbox.com slash OA I thought, Morgan, what you said was excellent. And the only thing that I would add, all of the lawsuits are of the form plaintiff being someone who was injured at the show suing various entities. And I gather from what you're saying that that's the case, that of these 20-some lawsuits, that they all fall into that pattern. In terms of answering Thomas's question of why the race to the courthouse, if you think, sometimes the plaintiff and the defendant will race to the courTHouse, right? Like, because the defendant would be a plaintiff in a declaratory judgment action, and so right, the question is, who gets to file first and in what capacity. And sometimes you feel like you have an advantage to being the plaintiff. And there are some legal advantages to being a plaintiff in terms of courts deferring to your choice of forum.

0:45:39 Andrew: But in a case like this, I suspect the other reason to want to race to the courthouse is that these cases are likely to be consolidated, right? Like they all arise out of the same common a nucleus of operative facts. And typically, again, not always, but typically one of the factors in consolidation is which case was filed first, right? And that's the case into which the other cases get consolidated.

0:46:06 Thomas: Okay.

0:46:07 Morgan: Yes.

0:46:07 Andrew: And so those are kind of off the top of my head, the reasons that I think of for wanting to raise to the courthouse. But Morgan, I absolutely love you sort of forcefully giving voice uh to to a point that is just not made even you know sort of in typical you know left-leaning media sources, and that is like we should normalize when people are hurt calling their lawyers, right, like that's not, that is not a thing that we should be like, oh, well, she done call her lawyer. Like no, like it, and as you point out, right, the the party that inflicted the the wrong absolutely has already called their lawyers. So yeah.

0:46:30 Thomas: Yeah. I

0:46:46 Morgan: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, it's like what you said about consolidation. It's also, I think, about a sort of a strategy of drumming up more clients. Right. Because more people who are at this concert are going to start looking for attorneys. Right. So if they see one guy is handling 10 of these clients, you might want to join up with that guy. So, as is the case, a lot of these names repeat, obviously. So, um, so it is in a way a race of a courthouse for that, to be sort of, again, the face of that for consolidation. I

0:46:47 Andrew: Yeah. Oh, good point. Good point.

0:47:15 Andrew: Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that. I think that that reflects prior experiences, and that's really smart. And you're a hundred percent dead on in terms of, you know, establishing early expertise in cases that clients look to. So, all right, what's going to happen next?

0:47:32 Morgan: Think what we're going to see is, I think facts about this are going to probably slowly trickle out. I know that there's been like a rush of information that came out, and then, you know, it was, was this a satanic ritual, was there a guy going crazy stabbing people, and then it was no, there wasn't, and then now there's, you know, hundreds of victims. And, you know, I feel like every day for a while, since um the concert happened, you know, we were getting more and more information, and I think the information is going to sort of slow down a little bit, but I think over time we're going to get more of an understanding of exactly what happened.

And I do think that these lawsuits are going to be settled, and I think that, um, essentially, though, I do think that, you know, um, like Thomas said, uh, you know, perhaps unfairly, Travis Scott is going, going to continue to take heat for this.

I've seen where people have led, you know, sort of boycotts on, who, on streaming his music on Spotify and things like that, because people are very upset with the way he handled it, and, um, they thought that his apology on Instagram wasn't, uh, sufficient enough, or, you know, again, it's like judging

0:47:45 Andrew: Yes.

0:48:32 Morgan: How authentic somebody is

0:48:32 Thomas: Do want to, again, throw in the caveat that, like, may be entirely appropriate to blame him for the premeditated behavior of setting it up. Or I have no idea, like, he may be to blame for that, it's, it's merely the, like, the on stage stuff that I think I have you know some sympathy for, like, I'm sure he has people shouting at him all the time, every single concert he does. I mean, that's kind of what people do with celebrities, with, with major music stars. So, you know, it's tough to be like oh we should have heard and specifically known that this crazy thing was happening right

0:48:33 Morgan: Oh Yeah. For sure For.

0:48:58 Morgan: Sure. Uh Yes, I agree with that completely, and also, you know, I think it is fair, you to sort of, look at him and sort of criticize, you know, whether his, his you reaction, or the lead-up, you know, things where he has in the past, you know, encouraged fans to ignore security guards and Things Like that, like, yeah, that is completely fair criticisms of him, and I think we should have that conversation about, you, maybe artists do need to do more to sort of, you know, encourage your fans to act in a safer manner. Now, not saying that that should be completely on the artists, like you said, Thomas.

But I think that what's going to happen here is there's going to obviously have to be some changes, especially in light of, you know, we're kind of, I wouldn't, I'm aware that we're still in the pandemic, but, you know, as, like, more events are happening, I think that there, there needs to be this emphasis on safety because I do think that people, you know, after you've been in the house, you know, for, I mean, a year and a half, you know, people are wanting to go out and go and do stuff.

And I think that we really need to make sure that, yeah, that's cool. And, you, you know, everybody wants to see their friends and go do fun stuff again, but we need to make sure that we're also, you know, taking care of each other and doing things in a safe way.

0:49:18 Thomas: Sure. Yeah and honestly maybe Maybe that'll be the story of this, like corners were cut due to, how you bad the last year was for live events. And who knows how many people with expertise, with actual knowledge, maybe they weren't maybe they're out of work. Maybe they weren'T able to continue. Who knows? Maybe that will be part of the story, too, is the, you inavailability of people with actual expertise due to this awful pandemic. I don't know.

0:50:30 Morgan: Yeah, and just hiring whoever because again, it's you know everybody's hiring and people are just like, okay, sure, you know first person off the street. So I think that's going to be part of this as well again. We don't have all the facts before us, but I can tell you number one. This was not a satanic ritual number two. This was not somebody This.

0:50:33 Thomas: Yeah,

0:50:49 Andrew: Glad we had you on for that, Morgan.

0:50:51 Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So number two, this is this was not some guy going around stabbing people with fentanyl. This was, like you Thomas said, this has happened before. These kind of crowd rushes situation that can be prevented. And we need to keep that in mind and also keep the keep the victims in mind and not victim blame. And also, if somebody is injured, then don't judge them for calling their lawyer. That's terrible. Stop doing that. I hate it yes um yeah I think we're I yeah

0:51:17 Thomas: Totally. So lawyers, do we anticipate settlements? As you said earlier no trial of the century probably oh

0:51:22 Morgan: Yeah No, I don't think, no, nobody, if my client wanted this to go to trial, I would, I would push them downstairs or something, because that, absolutely not, I

0:51:34 Thomas: Don't take legal advice from a Morgan, that's

0:51:35 Andrew: Yeah. Notice, Morgan's comments do not reflect the law offices of P. Andrew Torrez, LLC.

0:51:40 Thomas: Gonna say Yeah.

0:51:43 Andrew: We promise we will not push any of our clients down the stairs.

0:51:37 Morgan: Yeah No, uh, no, because I try to do the best it's but it's best for them but no um I I would would do everything in my power to keep my client from going to trial. If this were, if this were my, if I were a lawyer for life nation, I would, I, again, I Would tell them contact all your contact, your insurance company, get out your checkbook because we are not going to trial on this because there is going to be a very angry jury, um,

0:52:09 Andrew: I really think as somebody who, you know, did insurance coverage litigation for a decade and a half and maybe the only person in America that that finds that interesting. I think that the I think your prediction of what's going to happen is entirely correct. I think it you know it will be settled and then there will be battle by and by and among the insurers. And their insurance companies as to whether this was a covered event, whether particular policy exclusions apply. That's really where the money is going to change hands is between Live Nation and its insurers.

0:52:41 Thomas: Oh

0:52:42 Morgan: That's yeah. Yeah. I was, um when I, before I joined Andrew's firm, of I one, um I say that like we have 17 associates, but no, before I joined Andrew, I was at a, again, personal injury firm. We did a little bit of plaintiff's work, but mostly I was the lawyer that the insurance company would call. Right. So that's what I did. So yeah, that's where the fight happens. And, but again, that'S not necessarily sexy to a lot of people. You know, they want to see Travis Scott on the stand or, you know, something like that. So people don't want to see a bunch of insurance lawyers you know yell at each other

0:53:20 Andrew: Well, that is true. But your prediction is Travis Scott never takes the stand, probably doesn't even sit for a deposition, right?

0:53:22 Morgan: No absolutely not but I think That if he but he has said that he's cooperating with the investigation, so I think, as but again, as far as he knows about hiring decisions and things, the minutiae of that, which are things that the insurance companies are going to want to get into, he's not going to know any of that.

0:53:31 Thomas: Wow interesting okay yeah I'm sure there's some production company or something in charge of all that, who knows. All right well Um, thanks for the coverage as always, Morgan, a really grim situation, but I hope the the victims get some justice. I mean, again. Again, as you say, hashtag normalize talking to your lawyer when somebody with money screws up and your loved one is killed. Like, yeah, that's fine. Go soothe the hell out of them. That's how it should work.

0:53:50 Morgan: That's who's been sued Yes.

0:54:10 Morgan: Absolutely and yeah stay safe and I'm hoping that I can stop covering depressing pop culture stuff I I want I need a crazy celebrity divorce where we can root against everybody so I that's what I want that's what I

0:54:17 Andrew: Yeah. There you go.

0:54:24 Thomas: Well, submit Morgan Stringer pop segment ideas to openarguments at gmail.com for sure. All right. Thanks as always, Morgan.

0:54:32 Morgan: All right. Thanks for having me.

0:54:34 Andrew: Thank you. You.

0:54:35 Clip: And thank you, Let's go!

0:54:37 Thomas: Now it's time to thank our Hall of Famers, our all-time greats on patreon.com/law, and we're doing the uh, one month, we thank everybody within the month, we divide it up and we are on the second fourth, because I'm not going to try and attempt to say the other words that I mix up all the time. And so why don't you start us off, thanking our second fourth of the Hall of Famers, if you say so.

0:55:01 Andrew: The second quartile, uh, the best Quartile. Yeah, uh. Includes Sparkle Donkey, will host a fully Willie stocked patron pre or post show event for charity at our Tequila Lab For a Seattle live show. Yeah. And those guys actually reached out to me via email. I've been super underwater, but I love, I, the idea and we love the guys over at Sparkle Donkey Tequila. Fred Griffiths, a gender fluid, multi-class dual wielding blade lock fighter to our, our enchantment lay line. Text players can't gain life. Life damage can't be prevented. Nail the blue and black ones and we'll move on.

0:55:14 Thomas: Man.

0:55:38 Thomas: So you got to update.

0:55:39 Andrew: Have you done that one before?

0:55:40 Thomas: Yeah, you got up. This is all they got to do. Update your shout out.

0:55:41 Andrew: Yeah. Listener Thomas F: "Democrats should consider any major losses as permanent, for, for two undermine elections." "And be prepared to defend themselves" or, and then it trails off. "But, you know, or bad things are definitely going to happen." "I liked my pork streaks paired with Casa Agria at Casa Agrio and at Emperor's Brewery Beer." Lee Sharp: "GDT says everyone knows that the police can arrest you without, page two of two, your consent. Maritime Law's freedom menu." Thomas Kleberg: "Benghazi and the buttery males." "Storm the fort teaser for hall of fame shout outs. Supreme Court justices should have 18 year term limits, and so should Conrad Michaels. That's a big negative to both of those." Les deux lesbiennes, fabulo: "One more voter suppression bill, and I swear to God, I will pull this country over." Adam Borchoff, Jennifer Tchaikovsky, Edgy Veggie: "D&D minus cameo, question mark."

0:55:49 Thomas: Hmm.

0:56:36 Andrew: Brian K: "We have legal advice if ye have coin. Do not take legal advice for a coin. India Walton should have won. Support your local progressive candidates." Agree with that. "Support your global progressive candidates" - that don't know the India Walten story, but Uh, and uh, I I, don't know, we'll have to look. And Evie Huntington, Harvard alum, no hood. Thomas, take it away.

0:56:50 Thomas: Is that the socialist? I don't know. I'm Not sure. All right. Thank you, too. I would also like to congratulate Angus the Corgi. I watched him win in 2019 and cheered on his 2021 title defense. I enjoy mocking people who mispronounce adopted French words that mean a peculiar ability. I guess I am a fort teaser. Torsten Piel and a goat asks, would thou, what's that like to live deliciously? Alpha Kenny body. Elect Thomas Smith president, American honky tonk bar association. Angry Mac face. Penelope is glad Sydney got sanctioned for terpsichore. The books that burn podcasts reviewing fictional depictions of trauma since 2019. If there isn't already a Darth Vader Ginsburg, I want to be Darth Vader Ginsburg unless you want to use this as a nickname for something.

0:57:41 Thomas: This is not the greatest voting system in the world. No, this is just a plurality. April Poff, Murray Gregerson. Can we all just take a moment and appreciate how much Thomas's intro music absolutely slaps? Oh, thank you. Looks like freedom's back on the menu, boys. Boys. Changing my name to general contact unit problem child to increase the likelihood of the DVD screensaver thing.

0:58:05 Thomas: That's a fantastic crossover post. That will work. Learned handjob. The Dows.

0:58:14 Thomas: Dallas DA John Cruzot owes justice to Diamond Ross. I don't know that situation, but there you go. Heath and Eli's tickle fights and H.J.'s. Jake, Seattle Pete, Big Gabe, owner, and my employer evilly added an MBA clause after years of active employment under threat of job termination. Wow, That's terrible. Sorry about that. But But I hope you enjoy your Hall of Famer shout out. All right. Thanks so much, Hall of Chambers. And we will be on the third quartile, if you say that's what it is next week.

0:58:14 Andrew: That's also good,

0:58:49 Clip: Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar will eat you.

0:58:56 Thomas: Andrew, and now it's time for Thomas takes the bar exam, answer time. Time, this was an interesting one. I'm curious, uh, if I'm gonna continue my losing streak or if I broke my losing street. Pork the street.

0:59:07 Andrew: Do This question, uh, was about option contracts, right? So it says, on January 1, a man offered to sell his neighbor his lawnmower for 400. The neighbor was considering whether to purchase the lawnmowner, so he said to the man, "I can't decide whether I want to buy your lawnmauer. If I pay you 10 bucks, will you leave the offer open until January 5th?" So the man agrees to leave the offer open to January 5th, and the neighbor paid the man $10. Let me say, although, like, not with lawnmowers, and amounts like this is a very standard contract technique, right?

Like this is the kind of thing I do. I don't want to say all the time, but I do not infrequently, right. Which is, Hey, we're considering X transaction. And the thing is, if you just say no, right, you have to restart that process, right? There's no, you're at the point where you could accept the offer and that would create a binding contract. But if you say anything other than I accept the contract on all the terms that have been offered to me, if you try and change it at all, it becomes a counteroffer. And now there's no the other party can walk, right, and change

0:59:36 Thomas: Okay. Okay.

1:00:16 Andrew: His mind, solicit somebody else. So the idea is, yeah, you pay some money and go, go, hey, okay, offered me a good deal. I can't decide if I'm going to accept. So I'm going to pay you a certain amount of money for you to leave that open until a particular point in time. And then that's

1:00:31 Thomas: And it's also I was thinking of it more from the economics of it, the time value of money. Like, if somebody's like, "Yeah, well, but I could sell my mower today," and and utilize that money, there's a, there's value associated with, like, delay, the selling of your mower, even if you eventually are going to sell it, there is money associated with that time loss. Oh,

1:00:52 Andrew: True. That is true. But primarily it is to avoid shifting the burden of establishing the contract, right? It's to say, yeah, look, we agree on all the terms. I just haven't decided whether I'm going to pull the trigger yet. I want to buy myself some time.

1:01:00 Thomas: Interesting. So, that counter offer, answer A, I'll be curious to hear if I blew it, and that's the answer. I don't know.

1:01:14 Andrew: So January two, then the neighbor says, I reject your offer. And then the the offeror did not take any steps in reliance on the, on the neighbor's rejection. Then the next day, January 3rd, the neighbor said, you know what? I accept your offer after all. Is there a binding contract between the neighbor and the man? Um, I always love it when you do this, you eliminated the no answers and went with the yes answers, either C or D.

1:01:39 Thomas: I'll tell you, not because prima facie, I wanted a no answer or yes answer, I just, I didn't like the specific no answers very much.

1:01:40 Andrew: Well, let's take a quick look. Answer A is no, because the January 3rd statement constituted a counter offer. That would be true if this were not an option contract. But in this case, paying to to keep the offer open means that it is not a counteroffer, right? So that, yeah,

1:02:04 Thomas: Okay. Well, plus, what would the counter offer be? I accept, because the January 3rd statement was, I "I accept your offer." I didn't understand how that could be a counteroffer at all.

1:02:12 Andrew: I agree. I mean, usually a counter offer gives you particular terms, right, so I don't know that I love it as a counter offer even in the absence of that. I'm sort of trying to expand out that. That is not a good answer. So you were good to eliminate it.

1:02:17 Thomas: Yeah.

1:02:27 Thomas: Because he's like, I reject your offer counter. I also accept it. Like what? I don't.

1:02:32 Andrew: Right. That is true. And then B, will you eliminate it? No, because $10 is not considered to be adequate consideration to hold open an offer. Not true. One of the things you've learned is that it is very rare for uh courts to consider uh questions regarding the adequacy of the compensation, uh but in any event 10 bucks is is 10 bucks uh

1:02:57 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That's a couple of Crunchwrap Supremes.

1:03:03 Thomas: It's like five Crunchwraps Supremues somehow. I don't how that works.

1:03:06 Andrew: It is. The the language persists of a peppercorn, because there used, used to be, in, you know, 13th century Saxony, the idea is if you weren't sure if there was consideration, you would write "for the value of one peppercorn plus other good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency of which hereof is acknowledged by the parties. The parties hereby agree as follows." That's been replaced typically today when you say, "Oh yeah, put in a pepperchorn.

That means either a dollar or ten dollars, um, uh, but the fact that ten dollars can serve as a peppercorn means that it is presumptively uh valid to serve as consideration, um, and think about it the other way, like, if, if this were the case, like, you could steal anything that was nine dollars or less, right? Like, you know, I, I agree, you know, you, you sell me X, uh, I agree to pay you nine dollars, um, you know, No, right, yeah, no, so B is a very, very silly answer, and you were not fooled by it, so the question is, is it C or D, uh, you and the coin both chose D. Yes, because an option contract can always be accepted during the time period that the offer is held open, uh, the limitation on C was uh that uh it can be accepted durante that period uh so long as the man did not take any steps in reliance on the prior rejection. And Thomas, I'm sad to tell you, yeah, be on guard for those "always" answers.

1:03:10 Thomas: Huh.

1:03:58 Thomas: Yeah. And then you're like, nah, not enough of a contract. Okay. Yeah.

1:04:34 Andrew: This is an interesting, I think it would have been a harder question if in place of the inadequacy of consideration, you had had no because the man first rejected the offer, right? And then that would have really, I Think that might have have even steered you to the right answer. When you're thinking about an options contract, so the first question is, you have now paid for that entirety of that time period, right? And so then the question is can you do something to shorten that time period or do you presumptively get all of it?

And the answer is if you cause the person, the offeror, the man the in this case, to reasonably rely on your earlier rejection during the time frame, that can be the basis for a court later holding that there's no valid contract, right? So, in other words, imagine, man is about to either sell you property for use as a park or is going to sell it to a developer, right? And so as part of the discussion, they tell you that the seller says, hey, I'm about to pour the concrete foundation. I'm going to bulldoze these trees and pour a concrete foundation that's going to prevent you from ever using it as a Park.

1:04:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

1:05:56 Andrew: So I just need to know, are you in or out? Are you going to accept my offer or am I going to sell it to somebody else? Uh, and then, uh, and you say, Hey, hold it open, uh until, you know, January 5th, you pay some money. Uh, then you come back on January 2nd and say, I'm rejecting your offer. And I tell you, Hey you know that. Okay. You, we, just so you understand, I am going to have the trees bulldozed later today. And you say yeah, yeah, sure. That's fine. I didn't intend to buy it. Uh, and then you reject it.

1:06:26 Thomas: But you've added that step in.

1:06:29 Andrew: Right. Yeah. If, yeah.

1:06:30 Thomas: If in this bar question, he's like, just making sure you mean that the window of the option is over. And he's, like, yeah, that would make it an easier question if there was that. I agree.

1:06:39 Andrew: And, and so in that case, right, then the reasonable reliance by the offeror would

1:06:43 Thomas: Yeah. No, it's true. I should have gotten this one. I hear you. I was thinking, like what about the distinction, like the point that, I you thought that kind of confused me here is, like every day that he doesn't accept it, he rejects Is there something different between not taking the offer versus saying, well, I reject your offer. It's just because the man could reasonably think he meant to close the option window.

1:06:45 Andrew: Close the, would close up the period. So, yeah, I I think that's right. And I thought that was incredibly perceptive, uh, because that is the reason behind the option contract in the first place, right? Because remember, something that's not specified in the precise terms of this bar question but is true, and I think you were implying, is if I offer to sell you the lawnmower for $400 and you just say nothing, right, I can come back to you at any time and revoke that offer, right? You have not accepted it. So you're saying nothing is, in fact, right, a constructive rejection until the time in which you accept. And, right, it leaves me free to come back to you, right? I say, hey, I'm going to sell this to you for, this actually happened with a car I just sold, I went to the dealership and was like, know, and they, they offered me a very, very low amount of money.

1:08:02 Andrew: And I said, I will sell it to you if you come up to X. And then they were like, well, we're going to think about it. We'll call you if we decide to do that. And dann subsequently, I went to a certain large, no haggle used car dealership that offered me an number much greater than X. I was like, oh, great. Well, I'm going to sell it it to you. And so I called up the dealership and I was like, I revoke my offer to sell this to you at X, uh, and then turned around and sold it, you know, for a higher amount.

1:08:30 Thomas: What if mid-sentence they're like, no, we accept.

1:08:34 Andrew: I, we accepted your prayers. Uh, that would be, I, I would love to see that as a bar exam question.

1:08:42 Thomas: All right. Well, I think you've You've been Very Kind, Andrew, but I blew this one. I should have absolutely had it. And you're right, but that's I try to get too cute.

1:08:42 Andrew: Um, The, The only thing I wanted to add is the bar examine actually loves answer having those kinds of questions, not with interrupting over the the rejection, but with like acceptances mailed and not opened and all of that. Yep, yep.

1:08:58 Thomas: Male yeah exactly we've had one of those too, yeah yeah Well,

1:09:04 Andrew: There. You go.

1:09:04 Thomas: I blew it.

1:09:05 Andrew: So correct answer C. and

1:09:05 Thomas: It was C. Um, that was obvious. I should have gotten it. Uh, I feel really silly for having gotten this one wrong. Let's find out who the big winner is, who, uh, definitely did better than I did on this question.

1:09:16 Andrew: Well, Thomas, this week's winner is Pope Charmides on Twitter, who writes, "Not A, unless counteroffer has some unintuitive definition as a legal term of art. Not B, because there's no limit on the value of consideration." Put a pin in that. That's not entirely true, but it's good enough for Twitter. "The conditions implied by C seem reasonably lawish, and the always in D seems vulnerable to counterexamples, so I choose C." This is a fantastic way for a non-lawyer to work through the various possibilities, eliminate, choose the best answer, and Pope, you got it right. So everyone, let's give Pope Charmedes a follow. That is at ThirdWorstPope on Twitter, at T-H-I-R-D-W-O-R‑S-T-P-O‑P-E. And congratulations, Pope, Your Holiness, on being this week's winner.

1:10:06 Thomas: Thanks so mucho for listening. Thanks so macho to Ace Associate Morgan Stringer and most of all to our patrons. And we'll see you next time.

1:10:14 Clip: I move for a bad court thingy. You mean a mistrial? Yeah, that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

1:10:47 Clip: www.openargs.com. Be sure to join the Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/Yodel Mountain and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media LLC, all rights reserved. It is produced with the assistance of transcriptionist Heather Leverage, production assistant Ashley Smith, and additional contributions from Morgan Stringer and Debra Smith. Special thanks to Teresa Gomez, who runs our live shows and heads up the OA Wiki, follow at OA Wiki on Twitter. Additional thanks to the moderators of the Opening Arguments Facebook community, Emily Waters, Alicia Cook, Eric Brewer, Natalie Newell, Brian Ziegenhagen, and Teresa. And finally, thanks to Thomas Smith, who edits the show and created the fabulous theme music, which was used with permission.