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Failed Fyre Festival seeks dismissal of at least one post-debacle lawsuits

By | Published on Tuesday 27 June 2017

Fyre Festival

Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland would like to have dismissed at least one of the mountain of lawsuits that have been filed since his luxury island festival crashed and burned in April, in part based on a technicality in his contract with the plaintiff.

As well as being sued by his suppliers and customers, McFarland – who conceived the Fyre Festival shambles with Ja Rule – is also being sued by some of his financial backers.

As previously reported, Oleg Itkin loaned the Fyre business $700,000 and went legal in the wake of the event’s collapse in a bid to get his money back. Itkin is seeking to freeze McFarland’s personal assets in order to reclaim his loan plus damages, totalling $1 million.

McFarland argues that only $200,000 of the monies Itkin loaned to his business came with a personal guarantee – and he has put that sum, plus interest, in an escrow account pending the outcome of this legal spat. The rest of the loan was not guaranteed in this way, so Itkin can’t go after the Fyre founder himself for that money.

Besides, McFarland says in his response to the lawsuit, his agreement with Itkin said that disputes would be settled via arbitration rather than by going to court.

According to AMP, McFarland’s recent court filing states: “The investment agreement contains a broad arbitration clause requiring any disputes related to the agreement to be settled via arbitration – not in this court. Accordingly, the court should deny plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and instead dismiss or stay plaintiff’s action in favour of the arbitration mandated by the agreement upon which his claim is based”.

So that’s all good fun isn’t it? We look forward to finding out what other technicalities will be cited as McFarland’s lawyers work their way through that stack of Fyrey litigation.



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