Update On Fan Lawsuit Against WWE For Pyro Injuries

In January, Marvin Jackson filed a lawsuit against WWE. In his litigation, he claimed that he suffered hearing loss from being too close to the pyrotechnic blasts at last year's WrestleMania. In the interim, WWE has attempted to move the lawsuit from Tarrant County, Texas to federal court in the Northern District of Texas. In addition, the company has made the argument that the case should go through arbitration based on the terms that fans agree to when they purchase a ticket to a WWE event. 

Per PWInsider, Jackson responded to those efforts last Friday with his lawyer making a fairly simple argument as to why he's not subject to those terms. Jackson's case for sidestepping private arbitration proceedings comes down to two basic facts that he's stipulating. The first is that his nephew got him the tickets as a gift. As a result, he did not buy them and thus did not agree to the terms at the point of purchase. And the second is that he also never had any kind of possession of the tickets. The digital copies that were used resided on his nephew's phone, and he never had copies himself.

Meanwhile, WWE is asking the court to put the lawsuit on hold for the time being while allowing arbitration to take place.

Pyrotechnic displays have been a staple of televised WWE events for decades with shows as big as WrestleMania on their calendar having much larger presentations than usual. For a stretch, WWE had actually done away with pyro in an attempt to cut costs. However, that hiatus was short-lived with fireworks being brought back on a permanent basis again in 2019.