(CelebrityAccess) — A court of appeals in California has dismissed Metallica’s lawsuit against their insurer over more than $3 million in compensation in the wake of six shows that were canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The band sued insurer Lloyd’s of London over six shows in South America that were canceled in 2020, claiming that they had purchased cancellation, abandonment, and non-appearance insurance as a safeguard against cancellations.
However, Justice Maria Stratton ruled that the policy did not cover the shows in question due to an exclusion in the contract for losses stemming from communicable diseases, according to Billboard.
Attorneys for Metallica argued that the case should go to trial to allow a jury to decide if the cancellations were COVID-related.
In her ruling, Judge Stratton quoted Taylor Swift, writing “There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
“People were in a position to make a more accurate cost-benefit analysis of restrictions versus potential illness. The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at that point, two years after COVID-19 was first discovered, does not in any way call into question their reasons for imposing travel restrictions early in the pandemic,” Stratton added.
Metallica’s legal team has not yet commented on the lawsuit being dismissed.
