Ticketmaster website.

A San Francisco man who says he had to eat nearly $600 in Rage Against the Machine concert tickets is seeking to represent a class action of would-be concertgoers who have not received Ticketmaster refunds for their postponed events as the entertainment industry complies with coronavirus shelter-in-place orders. 

The Gutride Safier law firm in San Francisco, which filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Friday, claims Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment Co., retroactively changed policies on March 14 to no longer refund postponed events, only canceled ones. 

Ticketmaster's original refund policy was a primary reason users have been willing to pay premium prices for tickets and substantial fees directly to the ticket sales company, wrote Gutride Safier's Adam Gutride, Seth Safier and Marie McCrary in the complaint.

"A major component of Ticketmaster's value is that refunds would be available for postponed or rescheduled events. Customers that purchased tickets prior to March 13, 2020, including Plaintiff, relied upon this representation at the time that they purchased tickets from Ticketmaster. This statement was a material term of the purchase contracts," they wrote. 

Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for comment Monday morning. 

The proposed class action follows a flurry of lawsuits against universities, gyms, airlines and theme parks for failure to refund consumers after closures as a result of COVID-19.

Plaintiff Derek Hansen is suing for breach of contract; conversion; unjust enrichment; false advertising; common-law fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; and unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent trade practices. 

Hansen is asking the court to order Ticketmaster to pay damages, as well as refund tickets to postponed concerts purchased before March 30. He purchased tickets to two Rage Against the Machine concerts on Feb. 12 totaling $590. The concerts were "indefinitely postponed."

The complaint asserts that "around 30,000 events have already been postponed as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. By some estimates, consumers have spent more than $1 billion on tickets to disrupted events." The suit also seeks an injunction to prohibit defendants from continuing to engage in advertising and marketing practices alleged to be false, misleading and deceptive.

"Yet, Live Nation's president recently predicted that live events will not occur again until fall 2021 at the earliest," the complaint said. 

Gutride Safier did not return a request for comment at the time of publication.