A local case with massive implications for the social media world has been allowed to move to trial.
On Dec. 5, the State of California Second Appellate District denied a petition for writ of mandate from Snap, Inc. in a lawsuit filed in October of 2022. The suit, Neville et al v. Snap, Inc. was filed by Social Media Victims Law Center and C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, on behalf of families that had children die after taking substances sold by drug sellers operating on Snap, Inc.’s platform, Snapchat.
“65 families get to go to trial against Snap, Inc. in California Superior Court for the death of our children from fentanyl poisoning via Snapchat,” one of the parents, Sam Chapman, stated. “We won our demur and Snap, Inc. was allowed to appeal to a higher court on First Amendment grounds. They just lost their appeal, and we get to go to trial against them on 12 allegations.”
Chapman added that the group “took a product liability approach” and will now have their legal representation involved in what he said was “the largest pallet of discovery against any social media platform to date.”
The plaintiffs second amended complaint, filed on July 20, 2023, describes the Snapchat platform as an “open air drug market” and that the platform’s role in illicit drug sales “was the foreseeable result” of the platform’s designs. These design choices, the plaintiffs state, include Snapchat’s “ineffective age verification and parental controls,” as well as its automatic message deletion feature and a “quick add” feature that targets minors.
Counts against Snap, Inc. range from strict product liability and negligence to fraudulent misrepresentation. The original complaint had 16 counts, of which four were sustained in Snap demurrals, those being counts related to “tortious interference with parental rights,” “public nuisance,” “aiding and abetting,” and “loss of consortium and society.”
In January, Snap, Inc. told the Daily Press that it will continue to defend the case against what it believes is “legally and factually flawed” allegations, adding that the company is “committed to advancing our efforts to stop drug dealers from engaging in illegal activity on Snapchat.”
“The fentanyl epidemic has taken the lives of too many people and we have deep empathy for families who have suffered unimaginable losses,” Snap, Inc.’s statement to the Daily Press read. “At Snap, we are working diligently to stop drug dealers from abusing our platform, and deploy technologies to proactively identify and shut down dealers, support law enforcement efforts to help bring dealers to justice, and educate our community and the general public about the dangers of fentanyl.”
