Rod Stewart sued again over soccer ball stunt at Las Vegas show

A lawsuit filed Wednesday claims a Clark County man was injured in 2017 when Rod Stewart launched a soccer ball into the crowd during his show on the Las Vegas Strip.

It isn’t the first time someone has made such an allegation in court. The Associated Press previously reported that a California man filed a lawsuit that accused Stewart of breaking his nose with a soccer ball at a 2012 show on the Strip.

Glen Garofano filed the new complaint in Clark County District Court. It alleges that on Aug. 27, 2017, Garofano was knocked down and injured as other concertgoers attempted to retrieve a soccer ball that Stewart sent into the crowd during a show in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

Both Stewart and Caesars Palace are named as defendants. Caesars Entertainment declined to comment Thursday on the lawsuit. Attempts to reach Stewart were unsuccessful.

Garofano suffered injuries to his back, groin and legs, and he is still receiving treatment for them, according to his attorney, Mitchell Posin. He is seeking damages of more than $15,000, plus attorney fees.

“Stewart intentionally threw and/or kicked one or more soccer balls into the concert audience, knowing that said action had caused injuries to multiple members of concert audiences in the past,” the complaint alleges.

The complaint cited at least two other instances when someone was injured at one of Stewart’s concerts by a soccer ball. The earliest injury mentioned in Garofano’s complaint happened July 5, 1989, when Patricia Boughton was injured by a soccer ball, which caused her “permanent disfigurement,” according to the complaint.

Garofano claimed Stewart was served with a lawsuit from Boughton in 1991.

The new complaint also mentioned a lawsuit from the Southern California man who claimed his nose was broken during Stewart’s Caesars Palace show in October 2012. The man, Mostafa Kashe, suffered “substantial” injuries, including an impaired sense of smell, Kashe’s lawyer told AP in 2014.

According to Kashe’s complaint, Stewart was negligent in part because he had “significant experience in the sport of soccer and experience in kicking soccer balls, having previously tried out for a professional soccer (football) team in the UK.”

Kashe’s suit was settled out of court, online records show.

In November 2015, a New Jersey woman filed a complaint in District Court alleging that Stewart had kicked autographed soccer balls into the crowd during a Las Vegas show on Nov. 24, 2013.

According to the complaint, Nancy Voneilbergh was struck by another audience member who was attempting to get a soccer ball, causing her to fall onto a set of stairs and hit a wall. She suffered “bodily injury, pain and suffering,” the complaint said.

Voneilbergh’s suit was voluntarily dismissed, court records show.

Posin compared the litigation surrounding Stewart’s use of soccer balls at concerts to parenting a small child who throws a ball in the house.

“He’s not going to break something every time, but he is going to break things,” Posin said. “And if he keeps throwing the ball in the house and he keeps breaking things, eventually there needs to be bigger consequences.”

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writers Alexis Egeland and Rio Lacanlale contributed to this report.