Woodstock 50 Organizers Open Legal Fight Against Former Investor to Reclaim Festival
The organizers of Woodstock 50 have filed legal paperwork against Dentsu Aegis, the financier that canceled the festival last week, with the Supreme Court of the State of New York. The paperwork — a petition for an injunction — asks for the Court to place a gag order on Dentsu from speaking with the media, state officials, performers and others, force the company to return $17.8 million to the festival’s bank account, compel it to continue work on the fest, be more transparent in its accounting and add in anything the judge would feel is fair. Attorney Mark Kasowitz submitted the paperwork on Wednesday.
In strong terms, the petition claims Dentsu “secretly decided to abandon, and then sabotage the Festival to ensure that it would never happen” and “pillaged the Festival bank account on its way out, taking all of the $17.8 million in the account earmarked for Festival production costs.” In the words of the petition, “This is the equivalent of one spouse raiding a marital bank account and changing the locks in the middle of the night to lock out the other spouse and starve them of money to live. It’s contractually wrong and morally reprehensible.” The petition claims the festival needs “$6 to $9 million” in various fees to ensure Woodstock 50 takes place.
In terms of sabotage claims, the petition also accuses Dentsu of Dentsu “contacting numerous stakeholders — including musical talent and their agents, insurers and public officials — falsely telling them that they were released from their contracts with W50 and the Festival, and that the performers should not perform at the Festival, though they have all been paid in full.” The paperwork also claims Dentsu offered to indemnify performers and agents if they refused to perform and that Dentsu reached out to performers “and other Festival vendors” to ecournage them to “breach their contracts” with Woodstock 50.
The legal filing had been anticipated for several days. In a publicly released letter to Dentsu on May 16th, Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang claimed the $17 million amounted to funds Dentsu “improperly took” and accused Dentsu of wanting to “suffocate and kill Woodstock.” “These actions are neither a legal nor honorable way to do business,” he wrote. “As financial partner, we had the customary rights one would expect to protect a large investment,” Dentsu Aegis said at the time. “After we exercised our contractual right to take over, and subsequently, cancel the festival, we simply recovered the funds in the festival bank account, funds which we originally put in as financial partner.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/woodstock-dentsu-aegis-legal-filing-833397/
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