American justice relies on Taylor Swift to dismiss Metallica

Taylor Swift on everyone's lips. After the former president of the United States Donald Trump who deemed her “disloyal”, a Belgian university which cited her in a literature course, it is the turn of American justice to seize the queen of pop. The 34-year-old singer's words were used by a court to dismiss Metallica during a trial held last week in Los Angeles.

In 2020, the heavy metal group had to give up six shows in South America due to health restrictions imposed in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic. A shortfall of three million dollars, which the rockers wanted to have their insurance covered. But the Los Angeles Court of Appeal rejected this request, recalling that the contract excluded unforeseen events linked to “communicable diseases”. Metallica argued that the cancellations could be attributed to reasons other than the pandemic, as concerts resumed in 2022 despite the continued presence of the virus.

Teasingly, the judges dismissed the group, paraphrasing Taylor Swift and her hit All Too Well, reissued by the singer in a long version in June 2022. “We were there, we remember it all too well” (in other words, “we were there, we remember it all too well” there, we remember it only too well"), we can read in the court decision published on Monday. These few words, which we find at the end of the song, take on their full meaning for fans of the singer.

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The court regained its seriousness, explaining that in March 2020, “there was no vaccine against Covid-19 nor drugs to treat it”. “The fans were in short supply,” she continues. Patients were treated in tents set up in hospital parking lots.” The judges also wanted to recall that at the time, “the countries of South America suspended visas then closed their borders solely because of Covid-19”, specifying that it was “absurd to think that the “Administration closures were not the consequence of Covid-19.”

The resumption of concerts in 2022 took place in a completely different context, after the marketing of vaccines, the court underlined. “The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at this time, two years after the discovery of Covid-19, in no way calls into question the reasons why they imposed travel restrictions at the start of the pandemic” , again estimated the judges. Already rejected at first instance, the case ends on a bitter note for Metallica, who will perhaps learn a lesson from it: if justice is blind, it seems far from being deaf.