As per Billboard, a California appeals court has dismissed METALLICA‘s legal action seeking reimbursement from its insurance provider for over $3 million in losses incurred from canceled concerts due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuit was prompted by the cancellation of METALLICA‘s planned six-date tour of South America in April 2020. Shortly before the tour was set to begin, global travel restrictions were implemented in response to COVID-19, forcing METALLICA to postpone the shows.
METALLICA filed a complaint in June 2020 with the Los Angeles Superior Court, asserting that their standard insurance policy with Lloyd’s Of London, covering “cancellation, abandonment, and non-appearance,” was declined by the insurer due to the policy’s communicable disease exclusion. The band’s lawsuit labeled this decision as “an unreasonably restrictive interpretation of the policy” and accused Lloyd’s Of London of breaching the contract. METALLICA contended that Lloyd’s Of London could not definitively attribute the cancellations solely to the pandemic, as there were other plausible causes covered under the policy.
The most recent ruling, announced on Monday (March 18) by the California Court of Appeal, concluded that METALLICA‘s insurance did not cover the canceled shows because of the policy’s communicable disease exclusion.
“To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We were there. We remember it all too well,'” the justice wrote in the ruling. “There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
According to a November 2022 ruling obtained by Billboard, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Holly J. Fujie differed from METALLICA‘s stance, stating: “The travel restrictions which caused the concert cancellations were a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic. The evidence … demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic spurred the travel restrictions to South America and restrictions on public gatherings. The COVID-19 pandemic was therefore the efficient proximate cause of the concerts’ cancellations.”
METALLICA pursued unspecified compensatory damages along with a declaration regarding the rights and responsibilities of all involved parties.
