New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued the promoters behind Evolutions Festival, accusing brothers Michael and Justin Brown of collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from ticket buyers and vendors for a music festival they abruptly canceled and then never refunded. The three-day event had been scheduled to take over the Sugar Mountain Performing Arts Center in Caneadea, a small Allegany County community, September 5–7, 2025.
James said her office is suing Evolutions Festival and its organizers for failing to refund ticket holders and vendors after the cancellation. “My office will never allow unsavory promoters to ruin that experience and take advantage of consumers or small business owners,” she said. According to the New York Attorney General's office, the festival was supposed to run September 5 through 7, 2025, before organizers pulled the plug just ten days beforehand.
The financial numbers laid out in the lawsuit are striking. Per the Evening Tribune, the festival collected $243,158.04 in advance ticket sales from 1,157 tickets sold to 521 people, plus another $21,662.75 in vendor fees from 28 small businesses. Of those 521 ticket buyers, only 11 ever got their money back, and even those refunds only happened because customers disputed the charges with their credit-card companies.
Vendors Left Empty-Handed Too
It wasn't just concertgoers who got burned. The lawsuit also alleges that vendors who specifically requested refunds never received them, according to the same report from the Evening Tribune. Fingerlakesdailynews.com, which also reviewed the filing, reports that the complaint alleges 1,185 violations of New York's General Business Law, with James seeking civil penalties of $5,000 for each alleged violation.
Beyond restitution and penalties, the article notes that the attorney general wants a court to bar the Browns from hosting future events in New York unless they first post a $500,000 performance bond. Under New York state law, an advance ticket purchaser is entitled to a refund when the performance they paid for is canceled or rescheduled.
Dueling Accounts Over What Went Wrong
Organizers and the venue disagree sharply about why the festival collapsed in the first place. As reported by Finger Lakes Daily News, organizers announced the postponement just ten days before the event, saying the venue had not secured necessary permits. But Sugar Mountain owner-operator Jeremy Lane pushed back on that claim, telling EDM Identity that the venue's special-use permit was approved in 2020 and “remains valid indefinitely,” and that any additional permitting requirements fell under the festival's own contractual responsibilities.
Lane also said his team poured significant resources into preparing the site for the show. “My team and I at Sugar Mountain worked diligently to implement the infrastructure requested by Evolutions, causing a large financial investment and immense physical effort,” he said, according to the same EDM Identity report. The outlet also detailed allegations that more than 150 event workers were left without signed contracts, funding, or communication from Michael Brown or the Evolutions team in the two weeks leading up to the scheduled festival dates.
