The Louisiana bureau forwards this Courthouse News report of a recent filing:
Orleans Parish District Court, Louisiana
| Michael Metoyer v. St. Vincent Music Inc.; Studio Network—Orpheum LLC; Roosevelt Way Theatre LLC; ERG Enterprises LLC; Anne Erin Clark aka St. Vincent 12/11/2025 25-11749 | Premises liability. Plaintiff was injured when defendant St. Vincent landed on his torso, “inexplicably wrapping her arms and legs around him,” during her portion of her show that took her off stage. She had to be removed from him by security guards. View Case Details | Download Complaint p. Matthew Hemmer Morris Bart, LLC |
That’s pretty good as is—and I salute the people at Courthouse News for their effective use of limited space and their often entertaining use of quote marks when reporting cases like this—but I thought it did call for a little more investigation.
Just to be clear, the defendant here is not St. Vincent de Paul, the 17th-century Franciscan priest who was allegedly captured by Barbary pirates but escaped, settled in Paris, became known for his service to the sick and poor, and is now the patron saint of charitable organizations and presumably those being held captive by Barbary pirates. No, it is St. Vincent, the multiple-Grammy-award-winning musician and songwriter, whose real name is Anne Erin Clark. (According to this, her stage name is connected to the earlier St. Vincent, but only indirectly.)
None of this is mentioned in the complaint, which describes Clark only as a musician and “natural person domiciled within the State of California, who exerted specific contacts within the forum as described herein.”
The contacts in question involve Clark’s performance at the Orpheum Theatre in New Orleans on April 10, 2025—and more specifically, her alleged contact with Plaintiff during it. During the show, Clark allegedly “left the stage on multiple occasions to stand on barricades, climb on the walls, and enter the audience.” This sort of thing is not uncommon at concerts, and—as you should certainly recall from the Rick Springfield saga—it has resulted in litigation before. The assumption-of-risk doctrine immediately comes to mind as a possible defense, but that would depend on state law and the particular facts.
The particular facts here seem to have involved “stage diving.” According to the complaint, the “performance elements” of the show meant St. Vincent had to be “lifted, carried, and moved precariously over the location where other workers at the event were sitting,” and now you can see where this is going. The plaintiff alleges that he was working as an “event monitor,” which entails sitting in a chair and watching “for, among other things, patrons that are smoking or using lighters.” But the critical fact here is that “his position at the event [was] under where [St. Vincent would] enter and leave the stage during the climbing, crowd surfing, barricade standing, and other off-stage elements of the [s]how” (emphasis added.) Eventually, this happened:
Ms. Clark left the stage to stand on top of a barricade….. To do so, she was lifted over Mr. Metoyer…. She then let the crowd carry her above their heads in the vicinity of the stage, until Orpheum staff helped her back on to the stage—again over Mr. Metoyer—where she stepped from their arms back on to the stage. Minutes later, she again left the stage to climb on the wall up to the box seats. Once on the wall, she hung on a railing and descended to the arms of the crowd below. The crowd again carried her back to the stage, and she was again taken by Orpheum staff to the stage…. Rather than step back onto the stage…, though, Ms. Clark leapt from the arms of event staff and on top of Mr. Metoyer, inexplicably wrapping her arms and legs around him. Mr. Metoyer had no notice or warning that she intended to do so, was not hired to carry performers, could not carry performers without injury, and was, in fact, injured by her sudden and negligent leap on to his torso. Mr. Metoyer managed to avoid falling to the ground and swayed uncomfortably until event staff could remove Ms. Clark from his torso and push her back on to the stage, where the [s]how could continue.
Compl. ¶ VIII (emphases added).
Note that despite the crowd’s involvement, Plaintiff is not suing it. He alleges only that Orpheum staff and St. Vincent were negligent for leaping and/or failure to prevent said leap, and that “[i]t was unreasonable for Artist or anyone else affiliated with the Show to think that Mr. Metoyer or any other Event Monitor would be an appropriate person to leap on to.” Compl. ¶ XI (irritating over-capitalization in original).
As a result, Plaintiff claims, he “has sustained serious injuries to body and mind, including injuries to his spine requiring surgical repair,” etc., etc. Well, this is not impossible. I have to say it seems unlikely to me that someone whose spine had been seriously injured when leapt upon could not only stay upright but maintain that stance during the time it took event staff to reach him and remove St. Vincent from his torso. But I suppose stranger things have happened.
Finally, the plaintiff’s law firm—Morris Bart, LLC—sounded familiar, so I checked on that and was reminded of the two-year-old who reportedly became a huge fan of Morris Bart’s local TV ads a while back. See “Toddler Enjoys Lawyer-Themed Birthday Party” (July 31, 2015). Bart couldn’t make it to the party, but he did send a life-sized cardboard cutout of himself (among other gifts). So he deserves credit for that.
It’s tempting to suggest that this case should settle for little more than a life-sized cardboard cutout of St. Vincent, but we don’t have all the facts yet.
