On April 28, 2014, singer Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band sued to prevent the continuation
of production of his biopic, Midnight Rider, after a camera assistant, Sarah Jones, was struck and killed by a train on set last February. In this lawsuit, filed in Georgia county court, the singer alleged that the producers' option on Mr. Allman's life story had lapsed because principal photography failed to commence by February 28, 2014. Further, it was reported that Allman believed that the train crash had harmed his reputation and, therefore, wanted to terminate the production company's association with this project. In May, counsel for the parties represented to the court that they had reached an out-of-court agreement to drop the lawsuit.
Production on the film has since been suspended. The legal saga continues, however, as
other lawsuits have been filed in relation to this incident. The court will hold an emergency hearing on December 12th to determine whether to permit public access to videos and photographs of the train accident that killed Ms. Jones. Further, several individuals associated with production of this film will face involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespass charges at trial in March.
Read more about this case
here,
here, and
here.
See a list of related articles detailing all of the litigation surrounding this tragedy
here.