TENNESSEE (CelebrityAccess) – Nashville-based country singer Rae Solomon is suing Live Nation for $25 million alleging the touring giant stole her idea for an all-female music festival line-up.
In the lawsuit filed in Davidson County, Tennessee, circuit court, Solomon claims that artists including Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Lauren Alaina and Lindsay Ell––who are all opening the first day of Live Nation’s 2019 Country LakeShake Festival in Chicago June 21-23––were originally going to headline her inaugural Zenitheve Music Festival also set to take place in the Windy City later this year, before Live Nation swooped in.
Management teams from Lambert, Morris and Ell have since confirmed that they had no knowledge of Zenitheve Music Festival and had not been booked to perform, reports Billboard.
According to the suit, Solomon began planning Zenitheve Fest back in 2017 and midway through the process applied for Live Nation’s Women Nation Fund in hopes of securing a partnership with the company as well as festival sponsors. She claims that while in discussions with the Fund she was asked to provide a list of acts she was pursuing for her own festival and that Live Nation subsequently stole her line-up and booked the exact same acts for the opening day of Country LakeShake 2019.
Solomon is also alleging that once Live Nation announced the line-up for their own event, investors in Zenitheve backed out, “citing the direct competition from Live Nation.”
Solomon’s lawyer, Douglas S. Johnston, is asking for a jury to take the case. Solomon is suing for “compensatory damages of $25 million, as well as punitive damages and litigation costs.”
