Live Nation is very keen indeed for its legal dispute with disgruntled former employee Nicholas Rumanes to be forced into private arbitration rather than having his allegations of misconduct on the part of the live music company discussed in public in a Los Angeles courtroom. 

To that end, it’s told the court that Rumanes – like every other Live Nation employee – agreed to take any future grievances to arbitration first when he joined the company back in 2022. 

In fact, in case you wondered, he digitally signed a specific ‘arbitration agreement’ at 2.12pm on 26 Apr 2022. And if that’s just not precise enough for you, he clicked the submit button on that agreement at twelve minutes and 45 seconds past 2.00pm on that very day in April 2022. 

In a lawsuit filed back in April, Rumanes claims that he uncovered a “company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures” while working for the live music giant. 

And, he alleges, when he raised concerns about all that bad conduct he was first subjected to “a toxic and retaliatory work environment for months”, and then – in May last year – he had his contract terminated “abruptly, illegally and without warning”. 

Live Nation insisted that those claims were “false and without merit” as soon as Rumanes’ lawsuit had been filed. It then expanded on its position in court papers earlier this month, reckoning that when Rumanes claims his former colleagues improperly “inflated” or “exaggerated” financial figures in internal documents, he simply misread or misunderstood what those documents were trying to communicate. 

Those documents were “forward-looking estimates, not a statement of present fact”, Live Nation says, adding – snidely – that that is something any “seasoned executive” should have understood. 

Rumanes “treatment of projected figures in an internal working model as ‘inflated’ or ‘exaggerated’ reflects a basic misunderstanding of what these documents are and how a public company uses them”. Simply put, Rumanes did not, as he has implied, “uncover fraud”. 

Despite being confident that Rumanes’ core allegations are without merit, Live Nation doesn’t want to fight this out in front of the media and public in a courtroom. Which is unsurprising, given – even if it won – a public court battle with Rumanes could be damaging in PR terms. 

Not least because the former exec also accuses Live Nation of breaching the 2010 consent decree it agreed with the US Department Of Justice to allay competition law concerns about its merger with Ticketmaster. Live Nation is obviously very sensitive at the moment about any allegations that it acts in an anticompetitive way, given a jury has concluded that it operates an unlawful monopoly. 

In its recent court filing, Live Nation indicates it believes Rumanes is seeking to maximise public interest in his bust up with the company, not least by seeking mega-damages of $35 million. It says, “a claimed loss of that size is plainly an attention-getting figure rather than a measure of any actual damages”. 

In a separate filing with the court, John Burkle, Director Of HR Operations at Live Nation Worldwide, explains the process new employees go through when joining the company and the paperwork they complete via an human resources platform called Workday. 

“As part of the on-boarding process”, he writes, “new hires are provided with an arbitration agreement, with the opportunity to review and save it. New hires are asked to review and electronically execute the arbitration agreement. New hires have as much time as they need to review the arbitration agreement and can follow up with questions, if they have any”.

On 23 Apr 2022, he goes on, “Live Nation made the arbitration agreement available for review and execution to Nicholas Rumanes through his Workday account. Live Nation’s records show that Rumanes electronically signed the arbitration agreement on 26 Apr 2022 at 2:12:45pm”.

So, while a Ticketmaster customer may agree to take future disputes to arbitration via terms they never read (not that that stops Live Nation from still pushing for those customer disputes to be dealt with by an arbitrator in private), in the case of Rumanes, he knew exactly what he was committing to. 

Which means, a Live Nation spokesperson insists, “this dispute belongs in arbitration, as both parties agreed”. We now await to see if the judge agrees.  

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