San Francisco’s Portola Music Festival organizers are being sued by an attendee who claims she was injured at last year’s festival after a fall, court records show. The news comes just days before the festival returns to San Francisco for the second time.
Samantha Montalvo filed the lawsuit in September, around a year after she was injured at Portola’s debut festival at Pier 80. Montalvo alleges festival organizers and staff, employed by San Francisco-based Non Plus Ultra Events, failed to ensure that barricaded areas of Pier 80 were safe for festivalgoers.
“As the music festival began, attendees began running towards and pushing the metal barricades, causing them to collapse and causing [Montalvo] to fall and sustain injuries,” the lawsuit reads.
Montalvo is seeking compensation for her hospital and medical expenses, as well as other damages relating to her injuries. Court documents show the cash amount sought as unlimited. Montalvo is represented by Lusine Ghazaryan at Downtown L.A. Law Group.
In 2022, attendees were let into a cavernous warehouse stage at Portola near the front of Pier 80 through restricted entry points. On Day One, concertgoers rushed to the warehouse to see pop icon Charli XCX and techno wunderkind Fred Again. But the wait times and crowd congestion prompted some attendees to rush the building, hopping over fences and clambering over other people to get inside.
“They were at capacity, so they were trying to not let people into the warehouse,” said B. Towne, a security guard who was interviewed by The Standard on the festival’s first day. “They were clearly at capacity, so they were trying to do one in, one out. But people started climbing the fence, and they knocked it over.”
Portola organizers were forced to address the issue for the second day, and concertgoers noticed increased security and crowd control measures in place around the warehouse. At the time, San Francisco Fire Department officials confirmed one injury, a sprained ankle that was allegedly unrelated to the overcrowding issues.
The lawsuit also lists the City and County of San Francisco, the State of California, and the California Department of Water Resources as defendants.
A representative for San Francisco’s district attorney said their office will “review the complaint and respond in court.”
“After consulting with our real estate team, we confirmed that the Department of Water Resources does not own the property cited in the lawsuit and it is unknown why DWR was named,” a spokesperson for the state Department of Water Resources said. “It is possible that the department was named in error.”
A representative for San Francisco’s City Attorney's Office said their office will “review the complaint and respond in court.”
The Standard contacted the California Attorney General’s Office for comment.
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that The Standard contacted the San Francisco City Attorney's Office.