According to a new report by Rolling Stone, the family of KISS guitar tech Fran Stueber, who died after contracting Covid during the band’s End Of The Road World Tour, won a round in their wrongful death lawsuit against the band, as the band’s motion to have the case tossed was overruled in court in Los Angeles on Friday (June 21).
Catherine Stueber — whose husband Fran served as the guitar tech for Paul Stanley for decades — first filed the lawsuit along with several members of her family against Stanley, Gene Simmons and longtime KISS manager Doc McGee in October 2023, alleging negligence and wrongful death. Tour promoter Live Nation and hotel chain Marriott were named as defendants.
McGee, Simmons and Stanley challenged the complaint in a demurrer motion first filed in December 2023, arguing that the defendants and Stueber’s family had already settled the matter in 2023 through a $250,000 Worker’s Compensation settlement.
“Plaintiffs have already been compensated. This Complaint is an improper attempt by them to ‘double dip,'” the band and McGee’s attorney Barry Mallen wrote at the time.
“Clearly it was never the intent to settle a worker’s compensation lawsuit that constituted Plaintiffs’ exclusive remedy only to then have the same parties tum around and file a civil lawsuit in Superior Court against those persons who owned and operated the KISS’ touring entity that employed Decedent,” Mallen wrote in a separate filing last week.
Stueber’s attorneys had argued that the compensation claim was settled with the KISS company itself, not with Stanley, Simmons and McGee. The company was not named as a defendant in the case.
Read the complete Rolling Stone report here
Back in 2021, Rolling Stone scribe Ethan Millman reports: It was many a roadie’s worst nightmare: On Oct. 17, 2021, 53-year-old Francis Stueber died in his hotel room, nearly 2,300 miles from home, according to KISS and his fellow backstage crew. The longtime guitar tech had been with the band for more than 20 years and was a beloved figure in the KISS Army.
Having tested positive for COVID-19, Stueber died just two days after being quarantined in a Detroit hotel room. According to the Wayne County Health Examiner’s office, the father of three died of the virus.
