Drake filed a motion in Houston court last week, seeking dismissal of the lawsuits filed against him over the 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival that resulted in the loss of lives and left several hundreds injured.
Drake argues in his plea that he had nothing to do with planning the event and that he can’t be sued for just showing up for a brief guest appearance.
The stampede happened when fans rushed toward the stage on the fateful day (Nov. 5, 2021) when Scott was performing.
Although the lawsuits filed by over 2,500 people mainly target Scott, Live Nation and other organizers, Drake was also named as a defendant in some cases because he appeared on stage during Scott’s performance.
Drake’s attorneys argued last week that he should not be involved in the case at all, as he had no involvement in Astroworld beyond being asked to take the stage. They mentioned that the festival organizers also had “confirmed under oath that Mr. Graham was not involved in any planning.”
“Mr. Graham did not receive any security briefings, was not informed of any crowd control issues, injuries or deaths in the crowd, or any stop show orders at any time either before or during his 14-minute performance,” they said.
The attorneys claimed that Drake “arrived at the venue at approximately 7:30 p.m.” and remained largely secluded backstage in a trailer until approximately 9:54 p.m.; at that time, the star “immediately took the stage as requested, performed for approximately 14 minutes, and then exited the stage at 10:08 p.m..”
They argued that the discovery process had resulted in “hundreds of hours” of depositions and “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents,” but that none of it had established that Drake could be held liable for negligence.
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