Canadian Ticketmaster Class Action Suit

The Toronto Star is reporting that “a $500 million class action lawsuit has been launched against Ticketmaster and its TicketsNow subsidiary, accusing the companies of conspiring to force customers to pay inflated prices for tickets.”

This is a class action *you* can get in on if you purchased tickets through Ticketmaster for any event in the Province of Ontario, Canada since February 9, 2007. Here’s more from the article:

“We’re hearing from people that … they can’t buy tickets for the face value, and if you want to go to see your favourite artist, you have to pay two or three times the face value,” said Jay Strosberg of Sutts, Strosberg LLP, which filed the suit today in conjunction with Vancouver law firm Branch MacMaster.

“It’s a matter of fairness,” Strosberg said. “It’s also causing a fair amount of frustration.”

Ticketmaster’s practices amount to an alleged violation of Ontario’s Ticket Speculation Act, aimed at preventing ticket scalping, said Strosberg. The claims have not been proven in court.

“Our office has been flooded with calls,” he added. “We have a registration system online and people are registering at a speed which we’ve never seen.” The registration system is at ticketmasterclassaction.com.

The article also states:

The class action suit – which could include anyone who has done business with Ticketmaster and TicketsNow since Feb. 9, 2007 – was sparked by a complaint from Henryk Krajewski of Toronto, who tried to buy two tickets last September for a Smashing Pumpkins concert at Massey Hall.

Krajewski was unable to purchase the tickets at a face value of $133 from Ticketmaster and was instead forced to pay $533.65 on the TicketsNow site.

“We are interested in hearing about everyone’s experience. People should be able to access entertainment for reasonable prices. That’s what this lawsuit is about,” Strosberg said.

“We’re both younger lawyers, and we know what it’s like to want to go see an event and to not be able to access tickets.”

Both firms, he noted, are also experienced in the area of class action lawsuits. Sutts, Strosberg has recovered more than $1 billion in damages on behalf of its clients, and Branch MacMaster has authored a textbook on class action suits in Canada and acted in more than 80 such cases in four provinces.

This will be interesting to watch as things unfold with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office after the Springsteen ticket onsale.

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