Fyre Festival Organizers Hit with a Second Class Action Lawsuit

And the hits just keep on coming for the promoters of the doomed disastrous Fyre Festival.

In addition to the original $100 million class action suit filed Monday, a second suit was filed Tuesday against Fyre Media, Billy McFarland, Ja Rule, Matte Projects and “Doe Defendants 1-100”). The first four on that list are the promoters and organizers. The “Doe Defendants” are “affiliates, licensees, agents, and subsidiaries of Defendants.” I quote from the class action complaint:

15. Defendant Does 1-100, inclusive, are sued herein under fictitious names. Their true names and capacities are unknown to Plaintiffs. When those true names and capacities are ascertained, Plaintiffs will amend this Complaint by inserting their true names and capacities herein. On information and belief, the Doe Defendants reside and/or committed the alleged misconduct in the false and misleading advertising and/or sale of Fyre Festival tickets to California residents while knowingly concealing the fact that the music festival they sold tickets for was not the music festival they provided.

In other words, the suit targets a whole raft of people and organizations who had something to do with promotion and sale of tickets to Fyre. And it gets better.

24. As a promotional tool for Fyre Festival, Defendants recruited and compensated over 400 “public figures” with at least 10,000 unique social media followers to promote the event across their respective social media accounts. Social media celebrities to endorse and promote the Fyre Festival included: Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Haily Baldwin, Emily Ratajowski, Anastasia Ashley, Mike Thomas, Corbin Kelly, and Julia Kelly among others. These “influencers” posted content to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, among other sites, with captions and language that promoted the Festival and hashtags such as #FyreFestival that made it readily accessible to consumers.

25. These “sponsored posts” were in direct violation of Federal Trade Commission Guidelines on disclosing material connections between advertisers and endorsers. Social Media “influencers” made no attempt to disclose to consumers that they were being compensated for promoting the Fyre Festival. Instead, these influencers gave the impression that the guest list was full of Social Elite and other celebrities.

Ah. So the allegation is dumb concert goers were sold the idea that they could hang out with The Beautiful People if they just bought a ticket. Right. When did that ever happen?

Unlike the other lawsuit which asks for $100 million in compensation, this one asks for a jury trial where the court will award damages. This could get interesting.

Meanwhile, Fyre Fest has been barred by the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism from ever returning and promises a “stricter vetting system” for any future music festivals. As for blink-182, they feel vindicated in dropping out of the festival last week when they realized that some bad shit was gonna go down.

(Thanks to Pamela for the copy of the lawsuit.)