The parents of a 19 year old college student, Katie Dix who died of an overdose from ecstasy in August of last year at HARD Summer 2015, filed a lawsuit last Friday in the Los Angeles Superior Court against Live Nation, the parent company of HARD events, and the LA County Fair Association, which is where HARD Summer 2015 had taken place. The parents, Mark and Pamela Dix, of the Cal State Channel Islands college student filed the lawsuit accusing Live Nation and the Fair Association of negligence alleging that they should have known that the Hard Summer rave would promote “widespread illegal and illicit activity”. The lawsuit also states that the defendants “breached their duties to protect” attendees from people consuming or distributing illegal drugs. The defendants also include Staff Pro, who provided the event with security and staffing, Los Angeles County, which owns most of the fairgrounds, and the City of Pomona. The lawsuit accuses all of them of negligence in allowing others to create, or creating, “a dangerous condition of its public property.” The suit also alleges that the raves are harmful to public health and a public nuisance since 49 people were taken by ambulance from the HARD Summer 2015 event to seven emergency rooms around the region. One official said it was an “unusually high number of transports” for one event.
The Los Angeles County coroner said that Dix died of multiple drug intoxication after she was found unresponsive. Dix collapsed after ingesting what she thought to be pure Molly. The lawsuit alleges that the event was understaffed and overcrowded, so the medical response to Dix was delayed by half an hour, which is when she went into cardiac arrest. The lawsuit says that by the time that she arrived at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, she had saliva bubbling at the corners of her mouth and was unable to speak. The lawsuit states that she could have been saved with timely medical treatment. The suit described Dix as a “lively and vivacious student about to enter her second year of college.”
Another girl, 18 year old UCLA student Tracy Nguyen from West Covina, also died from an ecstasy overdose while attending the same HARD event as Dix. Since the deaths of Nguyen and Dix, the Fair Association has not hosted nor plan to host in 2016 any rave type events at the site. HARD Summer 2016 is this weekend, and has moved to the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana in San Bernardino County.
