Ultra Music Festival Organizer Hit with Class Action Over Alleged Refusal to Issue Refunds [UPDATE]

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Ultra Enterprises faces a proposed class action lawsuit over its apparent refusal to issue refunds for the 2020 Ultra Music Festival canceled amid the COVID-19 crisis. 

Filed in the Southern District of Florida, the 15-page complaint says the annual Ultra Music Festival was to be held this year from March 20-22 in Miami. After this year’s festival was canceled and moved to sometime in 2021, the plaintiffs and other ticket buyers’ requests for refunds were “uniformly denied” by the defendant, who has instead offered only to honor tickets for either next year or 2022’s event, the lawsuit claims, noting that neither have been scheduled yet.  

Initially, the complaint says, Ultra Enterprises gave proposed class members only 30 days to choose which festival they would like their 2020 tickets transferred to. According to the case, the defendant has repeatedly extended this deadline given ticket buyers are “reluctant to agree to defer their tickets in lieu of receiving the refund to which they are entitled.”

Tickets to the 2020 Ultra Music Festival ranged from $300 to $400 each depending on the date of purchase, with VIP admission costing up to $1,500, the suit says.

As the coronavirus pandemic began to spread, Ultra Enterprises, in a March 2 social media post, shared that the event would go on as planned in “just a few weeks” and that the company was preparing festival grounds for the event, the lawsuit relays. Plans changed, however, when the City of Miami and the defendant entered into negotiations to postpone the event, according to the case. 

On March 6, Ultra Enterprises announced that in light of a supposed “directive” from the city, not a mutual agreement between the parties, this year’s Ultra Festival would be postponed until March 2021, the lawsuit says. Four days later, the defendant, in response to swelling requests for refunds, issued a statement confirming that the company would not refund 2020 ticket purchases given the event’s postponement and despite this year’s event’s effective cancellation, the suit says.

The lawsuit rounds out in alleging the ticketing terms and conditions wielded by Ultra Enterprises are illusory and unilaterally unenforceable given that the company purports to give itself the right to retain any and all ticketing money regardless of whether the Ultra Music Festival occurs. Further, the plaintiffs argue the terms and conditions are void given that the defendant seemingly has no limitations on its self-imposed right to modify, add, remove, amend or update any of the guidelines outlined therein.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, a wave of litigation has been filed over certain entities’ refusal to issue refunds for services not provided while much of the country remained subject to various stay-at-home orders. The suit against Ultra Enterprises joins litigation against the organizers of the South By Southwest and Lightning in a Bottle music festivals over the parties’ alleged refusal to refund ticket buyers.

ClassAction.org’s coverage of COVID-19 litigation can be found here and over on our Newswire.

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