$160 Million DeKalb County Verdict Against Sony Music Over Fatal Shooting at Underground Atlanta Concert
After trial: The award covers two families ($80 million each). Sony, which never appeared before the default judgment, moved in late December 2022 to stay enforcement, saying it had no notice of the case; no public resolution has been reported since.
Won by Beasley Allen.
A DeKalb County jury awarded $160 million to the families of Ewell Ynoa and Giovan Diaz, two young men shot and killed at a 2017 rap concert at the Masquerade venue in Underground Atlanta, finding Sony Music Holdings failed to protect patrons at the show.
What happened
On the night of November 12, 2017, a rap concert filled the Masquerade venue at Underground Atlanta. An argument broke out among patrons, and during a break between acts a gunman opened fire into the crowd. Four people were shot. Two of them, Ewell Ynoa, 21, and Giovan Diaz, 22, died of their wounds. Ynoa was an aspiring talent in the music industry. Diaz had recently become a father. The shooter, Jonathan Bautista, later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received a 20 year prison sentence.
The civil cases began in June 2018. Rachel St. Fleur, administrator of Ynoa's estate, sued in DeKalb County State Court, and a separate action followed on behalf of Diaz's estate through his administrator, Xavier Diaz. The two cases, numbers 18A69571 and 19A77518, were consolidated. The defendants included Masquerade, Inc. and Sony Music Holdings Inc., which owned RCA Records, the label reportedly behind the concert. The core allegation was straightforward: the event lacked adequate security, and patrons were not screened for weapons at the door.
Masquerade resolved the claims against it through a confidential settlement announced in August 2022, leaving Sony Music Holdings as the sole remaining defendant. Sony never appeared in the litigation and was found in default, so the December 2022 trial addressed damages only. Parker Miller of Beasley Allen's Atlanta office tried the case for the families alongside co-counsel Darren Summerville of The Summerville Firm, LLC. On December 15, 2022, the jury returned a $160 million verdict, reported as $80 million for each family, and the court entered judgment on the verdict the same day with post-judgment interest and costs.
The judgment did not go unchallenged. On December 23, 2022, Sony Music Holdings appeared for the first time through a special appearance and filed an emergency motion for supersedeas, asking the court to stay enforcement. In the filing, the company said it had never been given notice of the motion for default judgment, the default itself, the trial, or the judgment during the four and a half years the case was pending, and that it learned of the $160 million award only on December 20, 2022, after news coverage of the verdict. Sony told the court it had retained counsel the following day and intended to file post-judgment motions or take an appeal, and it reserved objections to jurisdiction and service.
What happened after that motion has not been publicly reported. No published ruling on Sony's post-judgment challenges, no appellate decision, and no announced settlement between the families and Sony has surfaced in news coverage or accessible court records in the years since. The judgment entered on December 15, 2022 remains the last publicly reported ruling in the case.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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