Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, PRIVACY—9th Cir.: District court erred in dismissing breach of contract and fraud claims against Facebook, (May 9, 2014)

By Peter Reap, J.D., LL.M.

In a class action brought against Facebook, Inc., by a number of individuals, the plaintiffs’ allegations that the information disclosed by Facebook could be used to obtain personal information about plaintiffs, and that they were harmed both by the dissemination of their personal information and by losing the sales value of that information were sufficient to show the element of damages for their breach of contract and fraud claims in the absence of any applicable contravening state law, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has decided (In re: Facebook Privacy Litigation, May 8, 2014, Per curiam). Therefore, the federal district court for the Northern District of California erred in dismissing these state law claims.

The district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ California Unfair Competition Law claim, because the plaintiffs failed to allege that they “lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition,” was affirmed. In addition, the district court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claim under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act because the plaintiffs failed to allege that they obtained anything from Facebook “by purchase,” or by a “consumer transaction,” was also affirmed by the appellate court.

The case is No. 12-15619.

Attorneys: Kassra Nassiri (Nassiri & Young LLP) for Mike Robertson. Aaron Martin Panner (Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, PLLC) and Matthew D. Brown (Cooley LLP) for Facebook, Inc.

Companies: Facebook, Inc.

Cases: Privacy ConsumerProtection AlaskaNews ArizonaNews CaliforniaNews HawaiiNews IdahoNews MontanaNews NevadaNews OregonNews WashingtonNews