New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The Board of Judges of the Civil Trial Division of the Harris County District Courts met and determined to consolidate all the past filed and any future filed Astroworld lawsuits to one Judge for further handling.
The order was signed late Tuesday, Dec. 07, in response to a motion to consolidate that had been filed by well-known plaintiff lawyer Brent Coon and his firm, which has already filed more than 1,500 claims by concertgoers at the event. The much-anticipated ruling comes ahead of a motion initiated by Defendant Live Nation that requested the
Texas Supreme Court in Austin to stay all Astroworld cases for the time being and transfer consolidation of the cases at a later date through the
State Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation.
Brent Coon filed the motion to consolidate in
Houston before the Harris County Board of Judges and refused to join the Live Nation efforts to engage the
Texas Supreme Court, saying that such intervention by the Supreme Court in Austin was not necessary in this case and that now Live Nation and other proponents should withdraw their request if in fact they were only concerned about uniformity of proceedings.
In a statement, Coon explained:
"Our firm has handled many other 'mass torts' around the country, and sometimes a request to a state or federal Multi-District Litigation Panel is necessary to get all the cases into one court for uniformity of rulings and elimination of the redundancy that would occur otherwise. That said, Harris County has its own sophisticated protocol for handling these issues without outside intervention. The only explanation for Live Nation's action is to delay these proceedings and deny the plaintiffs swift discovery, trial, and - ultimately - justice.
We filed a request for the Board of Judges in Harris County weeks ago to consolidate these on their own Order, which would eliminate the necessity of all of the two dozen civil judges in Harris County to each have to deal with the same docket and discovery issues with the cases filed in their own courtrooms. But in light of Live Nation's action, we filed a supplemental motion earlier this week to expedite consideration. Thankfully, the Board quickly and without a hearing, ordered all the cases to be consolidated and assigned the docket of Judge Kristen Hawkins, who presides over the 11th District Court of Harris County in Houston.
Now that Judge Hawkins has the oversight of all of the cases, we have asked her to hold Dec. 13 for a status conference on the entire docket with all lawyers, which will give us an opportunity to start organizing the case between all the litigants and their counsel and start working on the extensive amount of discovery that a case of this magnitude will entail. There are many good lawyers on both sides of this case, and we look forward to working with all of them to get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened, and not only achieve some form of recourse for our clients, but to provide some additional assurances that this will not ever happen again."
About Brent Coon & Associates
Founded in 2001 by Brent Coon, Coon & Associates specializes in complex, multi-party trial law. With offices and legal associations throughout
Texas and the nation, Brent Coon & Associates has won hundreds of major jury awards and settlements against industry leaders in the petrochemical, transportation, pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries. As a triple board-certified trial specialist, Coon is also designated counsel to numerous unions, including the United Steel Workers, BMWED, TMPA and others, and has received almost every accolade for demonstrating superior legal and technical skills in the judicial arena.
