Drake is seeking to be dismissed from the ongoing litigation over the crowd crush tragedy at Travis Scott‘s 2021 Astroworld festival.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed after the fatal incident resulted in the deaths of 10 people and left hundreds of others injured.
While the lawsuits mostly targeted Scott and the event’s organisers, Drake – a surprise guest during the set at the Houston festival – was initially questioned for several hours in a deposition tied to hundreds of lawsuits filed in Harris County after the crowd rush.
Drake was named in various lawsuits despite him asserting that he had no involvement in the planning or the organisation.
A few days after the tragic event, Drake shared a statement to his official Instagram account addressing the situation.
However, in a motion filed Friday (March 8) in Houston court, attorneys for the Canadian rapper – real name Aubrey Drake Graham – argued that he should not be involved at all (per Billboard).
They said that he had no involvement beyond being asking to join Scott on stage, and festival organisers had “confirmed under oath that Mr. Graham was not involved in any planning.”
Attorneys also argued that Drake was unaware of any safety problems before taking to the stage. “Mr. Graham did not receive any security briefings, was not informed of any crowd control issues, injuries or deaths in the crowd, or any stop show orders at any time either before or during his 14-minute performance.”
They said Drake instead “arrived at the venue at approximately 7:30 PM and remained largely secluded backstage in a trailer until approximately 9:54 PM”, before he was “informed to take the stage”. Drake then “immediately took the stage as requested, performed for approximately 14 minutes, and then exited the stage at 10:08 PM”.
Additionally, lawyers argued that after “hundreds of hours” of depositions and “hundreds of thousands of pages”, none had found that Drake could be held liable for negligence.
“Plaintiffs produce no evidence that Mr. Graham actually knew of any risk in the Festival site design and layout, competence or adequacy of Festival staffing and personnel, or emergency procedures such as show stop authority,” lawyers wrote.
The alleged victims will reportedly have a chance to respond to Drake’s motion in the weeks ahead.
Back in February 2022, hundreds of Astroworld lawsuits were combined into one case.
Following the incident, Scott shared that he was “absolutely devastated” by the news. In November, he opened up about the tragedy again, saying that he will “always think about it”.
Earlier in month, it was revealed that Scott had been sued again over the Astroworld tragedy. It came after a grand jury decided that Scott would not face criminal charges.