Fan files suit against Brooks and Seattle's Key Arena
Saturday, December 16, 2000. Seattle Times
Janet Horne Henderson

A Burien teacher who says she was given lousy seating at a Garth Brooks concert because she uses a wheelchair is being permitted to go forward with her lawsuit against Seattle, but whether she can still go after the popular country-music singer remains to be seen.

Joanne Lawrence has accused Brooks of seating pretty female fans in the first two rows at Key Arena, which most concert performers reserve for wheelchair users. She was relegated to Row 23, she said, where she couldn't see anything but the bobbing behinds of fans who were up and down throughout the concert.

And she claimed the city of Seattle and Key Arena were cowed by Brooks and let him get away with it.

"I'm not some kook that's just out there to get Garth Brooks," said Lawrence, 54, who had polio as a child and uses canes, a wheelchair and a motorized scooter to get around. "We just want him to change what he does" to disabled people.

Yesterday, in a hearing on motions for summary judgment, King County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Learned refused to let the city off the hook but narrowed Brooks' involvement. Whether she'll let him out of the lawsuit altogether won't be known until she decides if he had enough control over seating to be liable for any discrimination.

"I'm pleased we're going to trial," said Lawrence, a teacher at Kennedy High School. But she said she's unhappy she may not get to face Brooks in court. "If you have enough money and celebrity, it doesn't matter if you discriminate against people with disabilities."

When the case goes to trial in May, jurors will be asked to decide if it was wrong to deny Lawrence seating on the floor, and whether the seat she ended up in had an obstructed line of sight.

Anne Doss, an assistant city attorney, claimed that in expecting an unobstructed view of the stage, Lawrence wants what no one else can have. "Able-bodied patrons are not guaranteed unobstructed views'' she said. "There is no unobstructed seat anywhere in the Key Arena."

Doss also argued that Lawrence wasn't seriously harmed. The extent of it, she said, is that Lawrence went to a concert 2 ½ years ago "and she didn't have a good time."

Joseph P. Hampton, representing Brooks, argued that Brooks should be eliminated from the suit because he's not an ongoing threat to Lawrence. "Mr. Brooks is in Tennessee, doing some recording and spending time with his family" and likely will not perform again at KeyArena, he said.

Hampton also said that if there are problems with the design of the stadium, they aren't Brooks' problems. An out-of-state performer, he said, can't be expected to understand the "arcane minutiae" of local building codes.

Lawrence's attorney, John Sheridan, said Lawrence tried to buy tickets near the stage but was told no because of the wheelchair and because Brooks fills the two front rows with handpicked fans. "Garth Brooks takes away those two rows and gives them away to pretty women," Sheridan said.

Lawrence says it infuriates her when people argue that standing up and dancing is just part of the concert culture. "Where does that leave us? I want to have fun, too," she said. "Imagine if you stood up in the middle of a movie theater. You'd get beaten over the head and told, `sit down!' "

Several years ago, Lawrence was denied acceptable seating at a Brooks concert at the Tacoma Dome. In an out-of-court settlement, she won a number of seating improvements for disabled people.