A new ruling from a California appellate court states that rapper Jeezy and Live Nation are not legally responsible for that fatal shooting that occurred backstage after Wiz Khalifa concert in Mountain View, California. In August of 2014 a 38-year-old man, later identified as concert promoter Eric Johnson Jr., was shot backstage at Shoreline Amphitheatre during Khalifa’s Under the Influence of Music Tour, supported by Jeezy. Johnson was transported to a local hospital where he died the following morning.
Days after Johnson’s death, police officers searched Jeezy’s tour bus in connection with the shooting and found an assault rifle, resulting in the arrest Jeezy for possession of an illegal weapon. Members of Jeezy’s entourage were also arrested for gun possession. The charges against Jeezy and his crew were dropped in December of 2014 after a DNA test proved they hadn’t touched the weapon. “I pray this had nothing to do with race, but it definitely had nothing to do with evidence,” Jeezy shared with TMZ.
In 2015, Johnson’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit Live Nation among others, Jeezy being added as defendant in 2017. The family claimed that the rapper was partly to blame for the incident due to his allegedly negligent conduct. They also alleged that Live Nation had been legally negligent because the company did not have enough security to prevent the shooting.
Just this year, a trial court ruled in the favor of Live Nation, arguing that the family “present[ed] no evidence of prior similar incidents that would make shooting in the backstage area foreseeable.” An attorney for the Johnson family shared with Billboard, “Despite a court somehow ruling that this industry giant has no duty to protect the public at its shows, the family remains hopeful LN will do the right thing and compensate the children of the man who lost his life back stage at their concert.” (Pitchfork)
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