Kevin Hart Faces Lawsuit For Allegedly Canceling Appearance

Kevin Hart and others cost an event planning company tens of thousands of dollars after the comedian canceled a party appearance and then bungled issuing a refund, a new lawsuit alleges.

AIM Hospitality Group LLC and president Maksim Vladimirskiy claim that Hart agreed to appear at an afterparty event they were putting on July 28, 2018, at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan to follow Hart’s New Jersey standup performance earlier that night. Hart agreed he would also make two Instagram posts prior to promote the party, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Vladimirskiy agreed to pay Hart $26,000 for the appearance and he paid Hart $10,000 in advance as a deposit on April 9, the court papers say.

But in the months leading up to the event, the “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” actor still hadn’t promoted his appearance at the party and AIM realized “Hart had no intention of honoring the instagram agreement,” the court documents allege.

So by early July, just a few weeks before, AIM asked for a refund of the deposit it paid, the court filing says.

In the meantime, AIM had spent $12,000 advertising the event, the court papers claim.

From July through September, one of Hart’s agents “strung along plaintiffs, promising the refund” and blaming others “for sending the refund to the wrong persons,” the court documents claim.

By 2019, still not having received the money, AIM learned that Hart’s appearance at the party had actually been canceled May 18, 2018, while Hart’s agent led them “to believe that the event was on track,” the suit alleges.

Further, Hart’s lawyers told AIM in 2019 that a refund of the $10,000 deposit had been issued but it went to the wrong people, the court documents claim.

Hart’s “appearance at a venue is worth large sums of money to promoters,” the suit says. “Hart’s mere appearance, even if for a few minutes, draws a crowd.”

But Hart’s employees “willfully disregarded their contractual obligations by using delay tactics and making false promises to perform,” the suit charges. “Defendants recklessly issued a refund to the wrong party and without any attempt to fix the careless error made excuses for their own mismanagement of accounts.”

AIM is suing Hart, his two companies, one of his agents and an exec at one of his companies for a total of $390,000 in damages, the court papers say.

Hart was also sued in 2019 when a women claimed his bodyguards knocked her over and injured her eye socket outside a screening of his movie “The Upside.” That case is still pending.

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