INDIANAPOLIS — In a unanimous decision, Indiana’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the State Fair Commission and against Mid-America Sound on whether contractual indemnity provisions could shield Mid-America from liability for the Aug. 13, 2011 collapse of the temporary concert staging structure used for the Indianapolis State Fair. The collapse in high winds killed seven and injured 58.
The Jan. 28, 2016 decision by Indiana’s state Supreme Court negates a lower appellate court ruling that was in Mid-America Sound’s favor. In that ruling, made on March 30, 2015, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled that the indemnity provision was not mere “boilerplate” verbiage, as the State Fair Commission’s legal defense had contended, but was, in fact, part of a binding contractual agreement. That legal victory for Mid-America Sound reversed a summary judgment against the staging provider made by a trial court in early 2014.
Also back in March 2014, Mid-America Sound agreed to pay a $50,000 fine assessed by Indiana’s OSHA but said it was doing so to “move forward in a cooperative effort with IOSHA and to avoid the costs and expenses of further litigation.” Mid-America also noted that it “contested the appropriateness of the citations and made no admission of any wrongdoing by entering into the settlement.”
Along with a temporary staging structure’s ability to stay intact in high winds, another key liability issue is the question of who makes the call to evacuate shows in bad weather, and when that decision gets made.
The State of Indiana, which has a law on the books capping its liability payments to no more than $5 million, has already disbursed that sum to victims and surviving family members affected by the 2011 collapse. An additional $6 million, approved by Indiana’s General Assembly, has since been paid as well, bringing the state’s payments to victims to a total of $11 million so far.
A press release issued by the office of Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller characterized Mid-America’s indemnification provision as something that the company “inserted onto the back of an invoice and then submitted to the Commission after the stage-rigging collapse in 2011.”
As part of its ruling, the Indiana Supreme Court decision brought up the legal issue of the apparently after-the-fact nature of the paperwork, noting that the indemnification provision “did not clearly and unequivocally provide for retroactive application” to shield Mid-America from liability.
For its part, according to reports, Mid-America Sound has been including indemnification provisions on a regular basis within its contracts and paperwork since 2003, one year after it had tried to cancel a concert during the 2002 State Fair because of bad weather and had been reportedly prevented from doing so.
