Next to Nickelback, there are few Canadian entertainers I would rather see suffer through a career-ending spiral of drug addiction than Justin Bieber. But considering that he’s still too young to get hooked on hillbilly heroin, I suppose I might have to settle for a career-threatening lawsuit. Of course, when a 20-year-old woman claimed he fathered her child, the suit was eventually dropped for being complete and utter bullshit. But where the college-aged girl failed, a soccer-mom may yet succeed—without getting pregnant, mind you.
Stacey Wilson Betts of Wilsonville, Oregon has filed a $9.23-million lawsuit against the teen heartthrob, Def Jam, Vulcan Sports and AEG Entertainment claiming that she became stricken with tinnitus and hyperacusis in both ears after attending a Bieber concert in Portland with her daughter two years ago. In the statement of claims obtained by TMZ, she says the Biebs “created a wave like effect of screaming by pointing into various sections of the arena. Then enticed the crowd into a frenzy of screams by continuously waving his arms in a quick and upward motion,” which she credits with “creating a sound blast that permanently damaged both of my ears.” With (presumably) a straight face and in all-caps, she then “respectfully” asks the court “to grant an award of $9,230,000 for expenses, pain and suffering, loss of quality of life, severe tinnitus, hyperacusis and permanent disability and impairment to both of my ears.”
Whoa, hold on a second. While the suit doesn’t specify what Betts does for a living (though I suspect a certain manager at CED is about to have her LinkedIn profile bombarded by a horde of angry teenage girls who’ve gotten their hands on a few of those leaked passwords), unless she’s the foremost critic of classical music in the country, I don’t see how her ears could be worth over nine-million bucks. And as someone who’s attended plenty of concerts that would make Justin Bieber sound like a preschoolers’ picnic, I know you’re not coming down with severe tinnitus after your first rodeo—though I can’t wait to see those medical reports—if I still care about this case by then. I’m not saying she’s a gold-digger, but if her ears are that valuable, I’m surprised she didn’t have an insurance policy taken out on them already. Meanwhile, I can’t help but wondering how her teenage daughter feels about all this…