So What Happened part 88

Mass Personal Injury Litigation

“The 1980s was the era of mass personal injury litigation. Hundreds of thousands of people sued scores of corporations for losses due to injuries or diseases that they attributed to catastrophic events, pharmaceutical products, medical devices, or toxic substances (see figure). Businesses and their insurers paid billions of dollars in indemnification; insurance, defense, and plaintiffs’ lawyers received billions more. The specter of mass liability frightened insurers from some markets and manufacturers from research and development in some product lines.”

On a much smaller scale (at the time) clubs that held hardcore shows were held liable by litigious parents who wanted to make everyone else pay for Buffy getting kicked in the head at the show.

“There will be no more fun!”

There’s a few lawyers’ kids across the country that had a big hand in ending hardcore and punk shows in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Thanks GUYZ! Totally awesome! j/k fuck off still!

Hosting skinhead and punk shows is stressful enough without getting served with papers from the upper class suburban families! it just wasn’t worth it.

Famously this ended stage diving (City Gardens) and moshing at many clubs and forced the shows back into VFW halls and basements…

…or onto major label heavy metal touring line up things.

I’m not complaining about the small shows in non-club settings, I liked them too, just in a different way.

By the time we were in the mid 90’s hardcore had shrunken way down to the die hards. When things started picking back up all the law suit types were gone and it was a free for all again.

The era of crowd surfing and jock moshing had mainstreamed these activities and took the teeth out of them in the public eye- so hardcore was allowed to live again.