Last June, the Electric Daisy Carnival touched down at the giant Los Angeles Coliseum. The popular festival-esque musical weekend drew approximately 185,000 people and headliners such as Moby and Deadmau5.
It featured carnival rides, five stages of music, scantily clad attendees, and 120 people taken to nearby hospitals for partying a little too hard. One girl, 15 -year-old Sasha Rodriguez, overdosed on ecstasy and unfortunately died.
Recently, Sasha’s family filed a lawsuit against the Coliseum, claiming that the venue “knew, or should have known, that the rave would attract minors under the age of majority, yet it failed to enforce such minimum age requirement." The venue had a 16 and over age requirement, but such policies are difficult to enforce due to false identification, people sneaking in, or just the shear manpower needed to check ID's of thousands - in this case 185,000 - of ravers.
So who is to blame? Why should the venue be responsible? How and why did the parents not know she was going to the festival? What about the festival promoter? Or is young Sasha, who unfortunately lost her life due to her own actions, ultimately the only one who is culpable?
Statistically, one loss of life or 120 trips to the hospital are not that many out of 185,000. But that's little solace for the Rodriguez family. In these situations, fingers will always get pointed, and lawsuits will always fly.