Lawsuits & Judgments

For those of you without Children in the house, let me introduce you Hannah Montana. She is a fictional pop star and the title character of a Disney Channel original sitcom of the same name. If you do have children in the house than you know that Hannah Montana is also an incredibly popular show, character and a talented singer.

The show follows the life of a teen age pop star named, Hannah Montana. Much of the humor in the show is derived from the secret life that Hannah leads. By day Ms. Montana is a normal teen who goes by her given name of Miley Stewart. She attends the local high school and shops at the mall with her friends. However with sunglasses a wig and a shiny wardrobe she transforms into Hannah Montana teen pop sensation. ( trust me, it is more convincing than the old superman transformations). Ms. Montana is played by Miley Cyrus, the 14 year old daughter of actor and country star Billy Ray Cyrus. Mr. Cyrus also plays Ms. Montana’s father on the show.

On Oct. 18th, the teen embarked on the “Best of Both Worlds” concert tour in support of her album “Hannah Montana 2 - Meet Miley Cyrus.” The concert tour, which also features The Jonas Brothers, has been incredibly popular and sold out immediately with some tickets being been resold on line for thousands of dollars.

The class action lawsuit was filed by Attorney Rob Pierce against the Miley Cyrus Fan Club, a for profit entity run by Interactive Media Marketing Inc. The fan club claimed that members would have priority in buying tickets for the concerts on its website. Many fans joined the club, paying the $29.95 membership fee, for this reason alone but were still unable to get tickets as the shows sold out almost immediately.

As a result, the class action lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in Nashville by Mr. Rob Pierce. The suit is seeking triple damages, as is allowed under the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, for all club member who joined in hopes of getting tickets. According to Pierce:

Thousands of people joined the club based on the understanding that by joining they would be able to purchase Hannah Montana concert tickets before they were offered for sale to the general public.

 

While the club and the website do not guarantee ticket availability, they explicitly state that members who log on shortly after tickets become available will have a good opportunity to get tickets. In reality, the vast majority of club members, including those who logged on at the appointed time or shortly thereafter, were unable to obtain concert tickets.

 

In its defense, the fan club has re-stated that they never guaranteed tickets and that almost 70,000 members were able to obtain tickets through the site.

More information can be found on the Mr. Pierce’s website

We are interested to see how this one turns out but more for the celebrity angle than any specific point of case law. However we strongly feel that when a business interacts with children or teens that the burden is on the business to act honorably and not rely on fine print or legal gray areas to get by. The young consumers they are targeting simply don’t have the experience to look for or decipher such offers.