Live Nation Settles Lawsuit Over Luke Bryan Concert Brawl

A man who says he suffered a traumatic brain injury during a fight at a Luke Bryan concert has reached a settlement to end his lawsuit claiming Live Nation didn’t do enough to protect fans at the “rowdy” show.

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The deal will resolve a case filed by Gary Stanhope, who was hurt in a “prolonged” brawl at a 2022 concert in Hartford, Conn. It comes after a judge sent the lawsuit to trial in May, ruling that a jury could find Live Nation liable for failing to prevent or stop the fight.

Attorneys for both sides asked the judge Thursday (Aug. 13) to voluntarily dismiss the case; court records show a settlement was reached at a hearing last month. Terms of the deal were not disclosed in filings, and neither side immediately returned requests for more details.

Stanhope sued Live Nation in 2024 after he was “violently beaten into unconsciousness” during a July 2022 Bryan concert at Hartford’s Meadows Music Theatre. He claimed the attack happened when he intervened in a fight between a nearby man and woman that security had failed to stop for several minutes.

The lawsuit alleged that Live Nation had been legally negligent — meaning it could have foreseen such problems but failed to prevent them. Among other things, Stanhope claimed Live Nation didn’t hire enough security even though it “knew that fights regularly broke out at this music venue.”

Live Nation fired back that it had hired 116 security guards and more than a dozen off-duty police officers, which had been “many more” than was legally required for an event the size of the Bryan concert. It argued the attack was a crime that was “instantaneous and unforeseeable,” and that Stanhope had admitted he was so intoxicated that he couldn’t even remember the incident.

“Despite having no memory of what occurred, or what level of security Live Nation employed at this venue, plaintiff brought suit against Live Nation, alleging that, while someone else caused his injury by criminally assaulting him, it was somehow Live Nation’s fault,” the company’s lawyers wrote.

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But in a ruling in May, Judge Janet C. Hall rejected those arguments and refused to dismiss the case. She cited witness testimony that there was “no security around” for several minutes during the altercation in which Stanhope had intervened — and that a jury might find Live Nation had failed to do enough to protect fans.

“Mr. Stanhope and various witnesses assert that there was a rowdy crowd, a lack of security enforcement, a prolonged fight, and a delayed response from the EMT once Mr. Stanhope was assaulted,” the judge wrote at the time. “A reasonable juror could find that it was foreseeable that Mr. Stanhope would be injured under these circumstances.”

Luke Bryan was not involved in the lawsuit nor accused of any wrongdoing. The actual alleged assailant was also not named as a defendant in the case, but Stanhope sought criminal charges against him in separate proceedings, according to court records. It’s unclear if prosecutors ever formally filed charges.