Lawyer Says 100 Attendees Are Ready to File Lawsuit Against Tool Over Festival Sets

A lawyer who attended the Tool in the Sand festival this past weekend says he’s had roughly 100 people sign up for a potential class-action lawsuit against Tool regarding the band’s performances at the Dominican Republic destination fest.

As previously reported, Tool played two sets at the three-day festival in Punta Cana, one on Friday night (March 7th) and another on Saturday night (March 8th). Video footage showed fans booing and flipping off the band during the second set as they repeated a handful of songs from the night before, after promising “two unique sets.”

Lawyer Stas Rusek, a self-described Tool fan who has seen the band live more than 25 times, was among those disappointed with Tool’s second show of the festival, and put out a call for other attendees to file a class-action lawsuit against the band.

He told Vulture that approximately 100 people have signed up for the potential legal action, adding that he plans to file the suit as soon as it is “ethically possible” once he investigates all of the claims. He also noted that he expects “a few dozen more [attendees to sign up for the lawsuit] per day for the next few weeks.”

Rusek also issued the following statement to Metal Hammer:

The potential lawsuit against the promoters of Tool in the Sand is indeed being investigated. We have had lots of interest from Tool fans who attended the festival, a category which I personally fall into. These were my 27th and 28th Tool shows. There was a palpable sense of betrayal in the air as the show began the second night, and it lingered throughout the remainder of the weekend. What it boils down to is that purchasers of the festival package were promised ‘two unique sets’ by Tool. While the comments on these posts argue about what ‘unique’ means, the reality is that the opportunity to see Tool play two unique sets, i.e. no repeats, was the determining factor for most attendees to pull the trigger on spending thousands of dollars to attend. Most Tool fans, like me, have attended multiple shows on the same tour, and we know that, due to the spectacular and complex nature of their show, most songs will be repeated. However, this is not what festival attendees were promised.

As Rusek himself noted, there’s definitely a debate about the meaning of the word “unique.” Of the nine songs that Tool played on Saturday, four of them were repeated from Friday. While it may not equate to the “no repeat” sets that Metallica are playing over two nights in each city on their current “M72 World Tour,” by definition the Tool sets were unique in that they were not exactly the same, likely making any potential legal action a difficult pursuit.

On top of that, attendees also were treated to sets from Mastodon, Coheed and Cambria, Primus, and other acts throughout the weekend, while staying at a resort for three days. So, the two Tool sets weren’t the only aspects of the festival.

Meanwhile, Tool played their first show since the Tool in the Sand festival on Wednesday night (March 12th) in Monterrey, Mexico, performing a 12-song set that featured tunes from all five of their studio albums. The band will play Mexico City on Saturday (March 15th), before embarking on their first-ever South American tour on March 22nd in Buenos Aries, Argentina (pick up tickets here).

Additionally, Tool singer Maynard James Keenan will head out on the North American “Sessanta V2.0” tour in late April with his bands A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, along with Primus. Tickets for that tour can be purchased here.