Facebook Defeats Lawsuit Over Failure to Remove User Pages–Cross v. Facebook
1 01 2018[It’s impossible to blog about Section 230 without reminding you that Congress is on the cusp of gutting it.]
The principal plaintiff, performer Mikel Knight, was the subject of critical Facebook posts related to two fatal accidents by his tour buses. Knight demanded Facebook remove the posts. Facebook refused. Knight sued. Facebook brought an anti-SLAPP motion predicated on Section 230. Sounds like an easy win for Facebook…right?
Yes, except somehow the trial court fouled this up. The court granted the Section 230-based anti-SLAPP motion for some of the claims but not for the publicity rights-related claims–despite the fact that Facebook merely ran ads on third party content, and without any reference to the ccBill case saying Section 230 preempted publicity rights claims in the Ninth Circuit (or the Caraccioli v. Facebook case, confirming that result). The trial court’s ruling prompted my first meltdown of 2016 about the state of Section 230 jurisprudence, when I asked “WTF Is Going On With Section 230?”
Fortunately, the appellate court fixes this mess. Case citation: Cross v. Facebook, Inc., 2017 WL 3404767 (Cal. App. Ct. Aug. 9, 2017)
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