Taylor Swift Disney lawsuit: Eras Tour plotter loses case

An Austrian judge on Wednesday dismissed a privacy lawsuit against Disney filed by the man convicted of plotting a terrorist attack on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Reuters reported. His claim centered on a brief shot of his parents’ house in the Disney+ docuseries “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour | The End of an Era.”

The 21-year-old Austrian, identified in court only as Beran A., argued that Disney violated his privacy by including the home, Billboard reported. He is serving a 15-year prison sentence handed down in May and has been in custody since August 2024.

Why the Taylor Swift plotter lawsuit failed

Judge Nicole Baczak ruled that the house simply wasn’t his to protect. “He doesn’t live there. He hasn’t lived there for two years,” she said, according to Reuters. She also found little chance he would move back anytime soon.

Baczak said it made no difference that news outlets had widely reported his name. She added that home addresses generally don’t qualify for the strongest level of legal privacy protection.

The docuseries debuted on Disney+ in December 2025. One episode showed the house, located in a town roughly an hour outside Vienna, for just a few seconds and never identified him by name. Reuters reported that Disney cut the segment showing the address in May. The series is still streaming in Europe.

Disney’s parents settlement and an appeal

Georg Kresbach, an attorney for Disney, told the court that the company had already reached a separate settlement with Beran A.’s parents, paying each of them 3,000 euros (about $3,400) over the footage of their home.

Beran A. did not attend the hearing, which lasted about an hour. His lawyer, Ulrike Zeller, said he will appeal. Billboard reported that representatives for Beran A. and Disney did not immediately respond to its requests for comment. Swift has no role in the case.

The foiled Vienna attack

Austrian police arrested Beran A. in August 2024, just before Swift was scheduled to play three sold-out nights at Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium. Organizers called off all three concerts. Austrian officials said the plan was to attack fans gathered outside the stadium using knives or explosives.

He pleaded guilty, and in May a court convicted him on several mostly terrorism-related counts. According to Reuters, those included an unsuccessful attempt to illegally obtain weapons, among them a machine gun and a hand grenade, and making a small amount of the explosive TATP using instructions from an Islamic State group video.

A Syrian teenager identified as Mohammad A., who was 14 at the time of the plot, was convicted separately by a Berlin court in August 2025. He received an 18-month suspended sentence under juvenile law for sending bomb-making instructions to the Austrian plotter and connecting him with an Islamic State group member, CBS News reported.

This story is based on reporting by Reuters, Billboard and CBS News.