Deaf, Dumb & Blind?

An Oregon mother is seeking more than $9 million in a lawsuit targeting pop idol Justin Bieber, a concert promoter, and an arena owner, claiming she suffered significant and permanent hearing loss as a result of tweeny-bopper screams during a 2010 concert.

As repoted by Reuters in the Chicago Tribune, the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Oregon by Stacey Wilson Betts. “claims that she attended a July 14, 2010, Bieber concert with her daughter at the Rose Quarter in Portland.

“According to Betts, the injury occurred when the singer ‘climbed into a heart-shaped, aluminum/steel gondola and was pulled out over the crowd.’  The lawsuit says Bieber then ‘enticed the crowd into a frenzy of screams by continuously waving his arms in a quick and upward motion.'”

Betts goes on to claim “the gondola that Justin Bieber was suspended in acted as a sound conductor, creating a sound blast that permanently damaged both of my ears.”

For the record, we Judicial Hellholes reporters are no particular fans of the Bieb.  But even we aging squares are fully aware of the effect the successful young performer has on his loyal fans.  So how is it that a mother of one of those fans had no idea what to expect by way of noise levels at his concert?  And why didn’t she, as so many other similarly situated parent chaperones surely did, don an inexpensive pair of ear plugs?

Ms. Betts now claims to be partially deaf, but in order to be as ignorant about Bieber’s fan-base and its capacity for shrieking before she agreed to take her daughter to the show, she also would have had to be very dumb and, quite possibly, blind as well.  In any case, we can be sure she was no pinball wizard.