In August of 2018, the City of Vaughan, (a Suburb of Toronto, Canada) cancelled a Caribbean festival midway due to noise complaints and is now being sued for $25,000,000. The city revoked the permit one day into the three-day festival, and ticket holders and performers were left stunned. The Summer Of Sound, SOS festival launched a lawsuit today for reputation damage and financial loss and wishes the city of Vaughan to give anti-racism and cultural competency training to all its staff members.
The situation can be read about in greater detail here I think the allegations of racism are overboard considering the councilor who ordered the festival canceled is a Canadian with Chinese heritage who is married to a Canadian of Italian heritage and she represents an extremely multicultural region. However, the financial concerns of the plaintiff are definitely warranted.
The defendant ordered the concert to shut down because of the noise. The festival was permitted to be held in an area that does not typically permit such things. Apparently, there were a lot of noise complaints, the festival went beyond its time limit on the first day and there is a noise law in the area that limits noise to 61 decibels after a certain hour. The city says the festival did not comply with the conditions of the permit. Now I didn't attend the festival, the plaintiff says the noise wasn't beyond 55 decimals after hours, but I think that is laughable. For those who don't know, 55 decimals is about as loud as a refrigerator and is quieter than your average conversation source.
What do you think? Is the lawyer lying and the festival was louder than 55 decibels after hours? Should they just accept the loss and never hold a festival in that prudish neighborhood again? Or, do you think they should pay 25.5 Million and go through mandatory anti-racist training? Bear in mind, the region is 35% visible minority and only 45% of residents claim English as their mother language source. I'm going to be interested to see how this lawsuit plays out.