The Texas Supreme Court has reversed a decision of the multidistrict litigation panel denying Facebook’s (now Meta Platforms, Inc.) motion to remand a lawsuit against it to an existing MDL involving claims arising from human trafficking.
In re Jane Doe Cases (No. 23-0202; December 31, 2024) involves allegations that a human trafficker groomed Doe, using Facebook to arrange meetings at the Texas Pearl Hotel in Houston. Within hours of communicating with the victims, the trafficker advertised Doe for prostitution on a site called Backpage (unaffiliated with Facebook). Doe was sexually assaulted at the hotel by various perpetrators. Doe sued Facebook and the hotel for violations of Chapter 98, CPRC, which imposes civil liability on a person who intentionally and knowingly benefits from human trafficking. In 2021, SCOTX held that Doe’s Chapter 98 claim could proceed over Facebook’s claim that the Communications Decency Act (47 USC § 230(c)) preempted Doe’s lawsuit. In re Facebook, Inc., 625 S.W.3d 80, 83 (Tex. 2021). Three years passed before the hotel, joined by Doe, moved to transfer Doe’s case to an existing MDL as a “tag-along” case. That MDL consists of numerous trafficking claims against numerous hotels and Salesforce, a provider of “customer-management software.” The victims allege that Salesforce sold software to Backpage for illegal purposes and that the hotels facilitated trafficking on their premises. The MDL plaintiffs, however, did not name Facebook as a defendant. Facebook objected to the transfer and moved to remand, which the MDL court rejected. The MDL panel then rejected Facebook’s motion for reconsideration. Facebook sought relief from SCOTX.
In an opinion by Justice Bland, SCOTX reversed. After a review of the history of the MDL process since its inception of 2003, Justice Bland’s analysis commenced with an analysis of whether Facebook’s case “shares one or more common questions of fact with others in the MDL.” Doe argued that that the trafficking occurred by way of the internet, and that Facebook’s conduct was essentially the same as the other technology companies in the MDL. Facebook countered that neither it nor Texas Pearl are named defendants in any of the MDL cases and that its case shares no common facts with them. The Court agreed with Facebook. Observing the general similarity of the cases (human trafficking on social media sites), the Court nevertheless found no commonality between the parties or allegations in Doe’s case and the others. Doe’s Chapter 98 case requires her to show that Facebook and Texas Pearl intentionally or knowingly benefited from the trafficker’s use of Backpage (and Backpage’s acquisition of software from Salesforce) to advertise prostitution. This showing pertains specifically to those defendants and has no relation to Backpage’s or Salesforce’s intent or knowledge under Chapter 98. The Court thus granted mandamus and instructed the MDL panel to remand the tag-along case to its original court.
This is an interesting case for a number of reasons. It appears to us that the key for plaintiffs to maintain MDL litigation against social media platforms and software developers for these types of claims will be to name as defendants every technology company that touched a transaction in any way so that sufficient “overlapping” parties will be present for purposes of the commonality analysis. Chapter 98 is relatively new law, so it will take some time for lawyers representing victims of human trafficking to get the hang of it, but once they do, we can expect to see more of these tag-along cases in the future.
