Ravers Fight Back: Inside the Class Action Lawsuit Facing the Electric Zoo Festival
The New York City EDM community might be more united than ever around one simple truth: the Electric Zoo festival needs to be held accountable for its 2023 festival edition. Following the disastrous Labor Day weekend event, a series of class action lawsuits were filed against festival the organizers, Avant Gardner, who also own the Brooklyn Mirage. This new complaint, filed just this week, “on behalf of tens of thousands of individuals who purchased tickets,” is the result of an early November order from the judge to consolidate the related cases, making the multiple lawsuits now a single class action suit.
The newly filed complaint contains some previously unknown accusations, in addition to an extensive outline of what plaintiffs call a “history of dangerous operations," since the companies inception.
“In short, they are the worst-of-the-worst of bad actors in our local nightlife community.”
The lawsuit also highlights a pattern of overselling events and unsafe crowd sizes (among many other issues) at the Brooklyn Mirage dating back to 2017, and mentions two separate lawsuits filed in August of 2023 against Avant Gardner to further support their described history of unsafe operations. But there are some even earlier legal troubles, like another incident, which occurred in May of 2016, when NYPD seized all liquor at the venue for their lack of a license to serve alcohol (when Avant Gardner was still known as Cityfox):
@cityfox #brooklynmirage. Warned you, No Liquor License No 🍷 #PlayByTheRules Alcohol confiscated summonses issued pic.twitter.com/M2Q8QCcxiE
— NYPD 90th Precinct (@NYPD90Pct) May 22, 2016
The other two separate lawsuits against Avant Gardner, which are unrelated to the 2023 Electric Zoo festival, were filed just weeks before the festival was set to kick off day 1. The first relates to “sexual assaults committed by its security guards”, while the other relates to their failure “to safely supply alcohol and keep its patrons safe,” (per complaint).
In the festivals statement announcing the cancellation of day 1 of the 3 day event, organizers blamed “global supply chain issues,” which allegedly resulted in delayed construction time. It’s important to note that this announcement did not come until 11:37 AM, just a few short hours before doors were set to open.
Plaintiffs however, offer a different picture of the true reasoning behind the festivals day 1 cancellation, and the potential reasoning behind the delayed announcement of that cancellation. The complaint goes on to state that organizers intentionally delayed the announcement the cancellation “to sell additional tickets, including tickets to “after party” events at the Brooklyn Mirage venue owned by Avant Gardner” and calling the festivals statement blaming global supply chain issues “a lie, and known to Defendants to be a lie when it was made.”
So what was the actual reason behind Fridays cancellation? Festival organizers failure to construct stages in addition to their failure to obtain the appropriate permits to operate the festival safely. This, coupled with refusing “to hire experienced union contractors who charged higher fees, and Defendants [Avant Gardner] had gained a reputation for failure to timely pay its workers/contractors, and thus could not find sufficient qualified staff.” amount to a perfect recipe for a disastrous, and potentially dangerous event. Plaintiffs go on to highlight a previously unknown allegation, stating that:
“Bildstein [Owner of Avant Gardner] personally directed and/or approved the overselling and other dangerous and fraudulent conduct herein complained of.”
Another dreadful component of this years festival was the extremely long entry and wait times for both security and ticketing lines, as a direct result of their overselling. The lawsuit attempts to provide an answer to this, going on to say “Upon information and belief, these additional delays were caused by Defendants’ failure to adequately staff and train ticketing and security personnel, and due to overselling of the event.”
Plaintiffs ensured no stones were left unturned in this class action suit, even addressing the misrepresentation of advertisement relating to state designs leading up the festival, calling the finished product a “bare-bones set up,” Plaintiffs go on to allege that “so-called “VIP areas” were not properly staffed and security guards solicited bribes to allow festival goers to enter [VIP areas].”
The layout of the festival grounds was describe as being littered with “safety risks”, including the ‘bottleneck’ which was present at main stage,. A bottleneck is defined as a narrow section that impedes traffic flow, and its presence at the main stage warranted many justified complaints from attendees that week.
Some festival goers reported waiting up to 3 hours to exit the festival grounds, something which plaintiffs state was a result of “[other] exits were or appeared to be closed, Defendants provided insufficient and untrained staff to facilitate exiting,” and overcrowding only exacerbated these issues. This perfect storm of events ultimately resulted in exit lines that lasted hours and looked like this:
Some other notable quotes from the complaint that deserve their own recognition, and speak volumes on their own accord:
“local law enforcement noticed that Electric Zoo had reached its lawful capacity only a few hours into the day. By approximately 6:00 PM, thousands of attendees on Randall’s Island were still waiting for access, and more were on their way to the island. As a result of the venue capacity having been reached, festival-goers were informed that no more attendees would be admitted.”
“The maximum legal capacity of the event was 42,500 individuals. Local law enforcement later estimated that at last 7,000 additional individuals were present, or approximately 17% above legal capacity.”
Finally, the lawsuit alleges that the “number of tickets sold substantially exceeds 49,500, as some individuals had not yet arrived by the time access to the event was closed.” and claims that “Upon information and belief, Bildstein [Owner of Avant Gardner] personally directed or authorized more tickets to be sold than could be legally accommodated.” This lawsuit highlights an important lesson for anyone looking to rip off the EDM community: ravers fight back.
To conclude, we’d like to end with this final quote from the class action lawsuit, which we believe best summarizes the entirety of the complaint in just a few short words:
“the Electric Zoo festival [was] not due to accident, mistake, or inexperience, but due to Defendants’ intentional practice of generating additional revenue and avoiding expenses by lying to their customers and failing to meet their contractual, statutory, and regulatory duties.”
