At the time, PETA responded to the allegations by launching a petition to urge moviegoers to boycott films where animals had been harmed, the Guardian reported. Jackson denied claims that animals had been mistreated on his set, calling the allegations “unsubstantiated.” The Rings of Power is a spinoff TV show set in Middle-earth’s second age, thousands of years before the events in The Lord of the Rings. The show’s first season was billed as the most expensive TV production in history and was streamed for more than 24 billion minutes, making it Amazon’s most-watched original show to date. “I think it is illegal to advertise as some of the best seats in the house, tickets that are in fact some of the worst seats in the house and ? charge a premium compared to other seats,” lawyer Joey Zukran with LPC Avocat Inc. said in an interview. The lawsuit also alleges that Ticketmaster was aware in advance that there would be more than one Drake show in Montreal this summer. Zukran said his client purchased his ticket at a premium based on the idea there was only one show with limited supply. “Therefore, when he finds out the next day that there’s another show, what happens is that the market is flooded with more tickets — another 21,000 tickets — and the price goes down.”
The lawsuit said that “Ticketmaster was very well aware that Drake — one of the most famous singers in the world today — would be performing two concerts in Montreal when it initially released tickets for the first concert, but concealed this information from the public in order to squeeze out as much money as possible from real fans who lined up (virtually) to purchase tickets for the first show.” The class action is seeking an injunction to stop Ticketmaster from branding tickets as “official platinum” when they’re not the best seats in the house, and for each member of the potential class action to be refunded for the difference in price and paid $300 each in damages. The allegations have not been tested in court, and the Quebec Superior Court has not yet ruled on whether it would allow the class action to move forward. Zukran said lawyers will seek a national class to include any Canadian ticket purchasers, but added that Ticketmaster may or may not raise arguments to limit the scope to Quebec. “The legal claim is based on the Consumer Protection Act of Quebec, as well as the Competition Act, which applies nationally. So we could potentially have a national class, but that’s a debate for the court,” Zukran said. It’s unclear how many people could be included in the class action, Zukran said.
