Having announced its 2013 lineup, Newcastle’s Fat As Butter Festival is gearing up for its first edition as a camping festival this October, but festival’s organisers have lost their long-running court case against rapper Flo Rida, suing him after he failed to show up for his Fat As Butter performance in 2011.
The rap star has wriggled out of paying almost $400,000 in damages to festival promoters Mothership Music for neglecting to turn up for his performance, angering nearly 11,000 punters at the 2011 edition of the festival after telling organisers he would not be performing just minutes after he was scheduled to appear on stage. Organisers fluffing to the crowd, who’d paid upwards of $110 per ticket, that “Flo Rida has slept in and will not be able to make the concert.”
The rapper hadn’t actually partied too hard, but instead had reportedly chucked a “hissy fit”, according to promoters, after issues with accommodation. Promoters Mothership Music tried everything they could to transport the headliner from Sydney to the Newcastle event, apologising profusely over social media to the many disgruntled punters.
Despite eventually serving papers over Facebook to Flo Rida and his management, VIP Entertainment and Concepts, to appear in a New South Wales court that ordered they pay $380,400 in damages and $37,745 in legal fees to Mothership Music, the rapper has dodged the more than $400,000 fine as a judge has now upheld the 33-year-old rapper’s appeal that using Facebook to issue the summons against him was not appropriate.
Following his 2011 festival no-show, Flo Rida – real name Tramar Dillard – dodged legal wrangling until, in May 2012, Judge Judith Gibson gave the unprecedented order that Mothership Music could serve Dillard and his management via email and a posting on his Facebook wall, an order made on the basis that the chart-bothering rapper was reportedly in New South Wales at the time and therefore under the District Court’s jurisdiction. “The rapper has dodged the more than $400,000 fine as a judge has now upheld the claim that using Facebook to issue the summons was not appropriate.”
But last June, the rapper’s lawyer Nick Furlan claimed that the NSW District Court had no jurisdiction over Flo Rida as he was not in the state when proceedings first began in April, 2012, a claim made despite the rapper appearing at the Melbourne leg of Supafest and at the Logies just days after missing his Fat As Butter commitment.
On this basis, Dillard and Furlan challenged the $40,000+ figure owed in the NSW Court of Appeal, where on Tuesday, a panel of three judges found in favour of the no-show rapper on the basis that the Facebook and email serving approved by Judge Judith Gibson were not an appropriate means to issue a court summons, because there was no proof that the artist was indeed connected to the social networking page.
“The evidence did not establish, other than by mere assertion, that the Facebook page was in fact that of Flo Rida and did not prove that a posting on it was likely to come to his attention in a timely fashion,” Justice Robert McFarlan said in the Court of Appeal decision.
It seems that Fat As Butter festival will have to cut their losses over the out-of-pocket expenses made for Flo Rida’s 2011 appearance, including transportation, a $55,000 performance fee, and accommodation, which apparently was the cause for Flo Rida’s no-show. Promoters contend that the rapper chucked a tantrum after a disagreement over accommodation, something that Mothership Music had no control over. “We basically got a call at 3:00pm saying Flo Rida had thrown a hissy fit, was not happy about his Sydney accommodation and had stormed off,” explained promoter Brent Lean at the time.
The results of the court appeal doesn’t do much good for Australia’s disastrous relationship with hip-hop artists with festivals and tours, this year’s spotty track record including the cancellation of the Nas-curated, Live Nation-backed Movement festival, the postponement of Supafest, and the inaugural Hype hip hop festival falling apart before its lineup was even announced. Then there were the risky failures of Urban Vibe, billed as “the biggest hip-hop event Mildura had ever seen,” Coolio’s recent Australian Tour, a botched visit from Mos Def (nee Yasiin), and the stricken Heatwave festival, whose promoter called the ‘hip hop curse’ all superstition.
