CCC Ticket Suit Given Go-Ahead

A U.S. District Court judge has given the go-ahead to a class-action lawsuit claiming Clear Channel Communications used its market dominance to illegally inflate concert ticket prices.

The case in question is just the latest bit of fallout from a similar suit filed against the former Live Nation parent company, which was denied a motion for class certification in 2003.

This time, Judge Stephen Wilson granted class-action status to five lawsuits, of 23 filed, headed up by the Seattle-based firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro on behalf of individual concertgoers. In the suit that was dismissed in 2003, a judge ruled that the relevant market for concerts was the local, rather than a national, region.

In 2006, attorneys in at least six regions simultaneously filed essentially the same suit, thereby satisfying the previous judge’s jurisdictional issue that caused the dismissal.