Injured By Someone Who Was Intoxicated At A Summer Music Festival? This Is What You Should Know
Summer music festivals are heading into high gear—and that probably means that emergency rooms anywhere near them are also stepping up their pace. The combination of exuberance and alcohol can sometimes make the festival experience anything but festive. If you're injured by someone who had a little too much alcohol in their system at a music festival this summer, this is what you should know.
The music festival's promoters or the property owners may have some liability for your injuries.
While the person who directly injured you is certainly responsible for his or her own actions, the festival's promoters and the property owner are also important to consider when deciding where to aim a lawsuit. In fact, they may be the most important possible defendants because the person that hurt you may not have enough assets, income, or insurance to make a lawsuit feasible.
The law does hold promoters and property owners responsible for the safety of their invited guests—they're expected to take reasonable precautions to prevent foreseeable injuries and to try to stop problems before they start.
It's important to consider the different ways that your injury could have been prevented.
One of the big things that any attorney is going to want to know is what type of security procedures and safety checks were in place. It's easy enough to predict and plan for certain types of behavior in advance. For example, it isn't unheard of for excited attendees to rush the stage at a music festival, which has caused injuries before.
Your attorney may look at several different areas of concern, depending on how you were injured:
- Were there enough security officers and festival staff in attendance to handle the crowd?
- Were there precautions taken to keep people from becoming visibly intoxicated?
- Were people who were caught acting out removed from the premises in order to keep others safe?
- Were illegal drugs or weapons involved? If they were, what did the festival's staff do to prevent the issue?
Not having enough security on hand or not taking adequate steps to prevent people from behaving in a criminal manner (including being publicly drunken) is a legal issue known as negligent security.
It's also important to look at how the musicians behaved.
Your attorney is also likely to want to know if the musicians encouraged the crowd to get boisterous or act in a way that caused your injuries. Were you thrown to the ground when somebody tried to body surf the crowd at a musician's urging? Did the musicians throw memorabilia into the crowd, causing someone to trample over you in the rush to grab something? If the musicians contributed to the situation that caused your injury, they may also have some liability.
Don't assume that you can't recover for your injuries if you were hurt at a music festival, even if you aren't sure who hurt you or think that the person who injured you couldn't afford to pay your medical bills. Talk to an attorney about the situation instead. For more information, contact Bangel, Bangel, & Bangel or a similar firm.