Ticketmaster.com terms of use did not govern claims arising from related ticket exchange website
Plaintiff sued defendants Ticketmaster and Live Nation asserting violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act and a similar state law. He claimed that Ticketmaster’s NFL Ticket Exchange website did not provide information about wheelchair-accessible seating. Defendants filed a motion asking the court to compel the parties to arbitrate the case. The court denied the motion.
Neither party argued that the terms and conditions of the Ticket Exchange website governed the dispute between them. Defendants instead argued that the clickwrap agreement governing previous purchases defendant had made from ticketmaster.com for concerts applied to plaintiff’s use of the Ticket Exchange website.
This clickwrap agreement contained an arbitration provision that changed over time. Before November 2012, the provision contained broad language stating that the parties “agree[d] to arbitrate all disputes and claims between [them].” The language after November 2012 limited the arbitration provision to any “dispute or claim relating in any way to [plaintiff’s] use of the Site, or to products or services sold or distributed by … or through [defendants].” The definition of “Site” did not include the Ticket Exchange website.
The court rejected defendants’ arguments that the ticketmaster.com terms of service governed plaintiff’s use of the Ticket Exchange website.
The pre-November 2012 terms governed only “the use of ticketmaster.com and mobile versions thereof.” The court observed that at the time, the Ticket Exchange website did not yet exist, and that ticketmaster.com contained a “section” serving the same purpose as the now-existing Ticket Exchange website. Accordingly, the court held that plaintiff would not be deemed to have agreed to arbitrate claims relating to his use of a website before the website was even created.
As to the November 2012-onward terms, the court easily determined those did not apply, as they did, by their own terms, apply only to the Site (which did not include Ticket Exchange). And since Plaintiff had made no purchase on the Ticket Exchange website, the scope of the terms purporting to cover “products or services sold or distributed by … or through [defendants]” still failed to reach the Ticket Exchange website.
Long v. Live Nation Worldwide, 2017 WL 5194978 (W.D. Wash., November 9, 2017)
About the Author: Evan Brown is a Chicago technology and intellectual property attorney. Call Evan at (630) 362-7237, send email to ebrown [at] internetcases.com, or follow him on Twitter @internetcases. Read Evan’s other blog, UDRP Tracker, for information about domain name disputes.