A federal judge has rejected another bid Mark Zuckerberg individually liable in two dozen lawsuits Metaplatforms Inc. and other social media companies that get children hooked on their products.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne González Rogerswhich oversees the business, sided with Meta’s CEO on Thursday, finding that a revised complaint was still not legally sufficient to proceed. The decision dismisses Zuckerberg as an individual defendant, without affecting the claims against Meta as a company.
Mark Zuckerberg
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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Lawsuits filed on behalf of young people allege that Zuckerberg was repeatedly warned by Meta employees that Instagram and Facebook were not safe for children, but ignored the findings and chose not to share them publicly.
It is generally difficult to hold CEOs of large companies personally responsible for wrongdoing because of corporate law’s tradition of shielding executives from liability.
“While it is possible that this discovery may reveal Zuckerberg’s more active participation and direction in Meta’s alleged fraudulent concealment, the allegations before the court are insufficient to meet the standard of corporate officer liability,” Rogers said in her command.
The cases mentioning Zuckerberg are a small subset of a collection of more than 1,000 lawsuits in state and federal courts in California by families and public school districts against Meta, along with Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, ByteDance Ltd.‘s TikTok, and Snap Inc., owner of the Snapchat platform. Rogers and a state judge in Los Angeles did so allowed some claim to be taking action against the companies, while others are being fired.
The case is In Re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, 22-md-03047, US District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).
–With help from Isaiah Poritz (Bloomberg’s Law).
To contact the reporter about this story:
Madlin Mekelburg in Austin at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at [email protected]
Peter Blumberg, Steve Stroth
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