Judge May Grant Early Discovery in Facebook Data Mining Class Action

A California federal judge recently revealed that he was considering allowing plaintiffs in a consolidated Facebook data mining class action access to information revealed by previous investigations.

On Aug. 23, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria recommended that plaintiffs in the consolidated Facebook data mining class action narrow their requests for discovery to documents related to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation and existing records related to third-party apps which Facebook has reportedly suspended from their site.

Judge Chhabria’s suggestions followed his statements that discovery requests thus far have been too broad to be granted.

“A number of times during our discussions, we’ve gotten to a point where you say, ‘We haven’t decided whether to include that in the complaint,’” Judge Chhabria told Class counsel. “Every time you say that, I think, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t allow discovery now. Maybe we should wait and see what’s in the complaint, so we’re not aiming at a moving target.’ […] Discovery is not supposed to be a fishing expedition. One thing I’m convinced of is that your discovery request is vastly overbroad, at least for this phase.”

The Facebook data mining class action was originally filed in March 2018 following news that Cambridge Analytica mined data from users of Facebook. Cambridge Analytica is a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and allegedly mined data to create voter profiles.

Since the original Facebook class action was filed, the case has been consolidated into multidistrict litigation and will have to eliminate some of the 70 different claims which have been made in numerous lawsuits. However, much of the recent discovery hearing was spent arguing whether a consolidated complaint or discovery should come first.

Counsel for Facebook has argued that discovery should wait until after the consolidated complaint is due in four weeks, asking “What’s the rush?”

“They seem to think that all of Facebook is illegal,” he said. “Their discovery request reflects that. … Their request has to be tied to the claims that they’re seeking.”

Judge Chhabria reportedly saw the logic in this argument, voicing his uncertainty at granting discovery requests when he isn’t sure that the case could survive a motion to dismiss.

“Regardless of how we judge what happened from a moral or ethical standpoint, it’s not obvious to me how Facebook violated the law,” Judge Chhabria said. “It’s not obvious to me how people were injured by it in the Article III sense.”

Counsel for plaintiffs in the Facebook data mining class action has refuted this argument, saying that users of the social media site are experiencing real consequences. Consumers affected by the Facebook data mining scheme have allegedly spent money on credit monitoring after news broke that the social media giant allegedly had access to credit card numbers, spending habits, addresses, private messages, and banking information.

“This is identity theft that is so far beyond your Social Security information,” plaintiff counsel said. “On its face, the collection and aggregation of these details is highly personal.”

Plaintiffs are represented by Lesley Elizabeth Weaver of Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP and Derek William Loeser of Keller Rohrback LLP.

The Facebook Data Mining Class Action Lawsuit is In re: Facebook Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, Case No. 3:18-md-02843, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Feb. 1, 2019, a federal judge is questioning the strength of Facebook users’ arguments in a class action lawsuit alleging the social networking website shared private user data with third parties. The judge states that Facebook’s disclosures about how data is captured and used are “quite vague,” however, he also says the claims of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are also relatively “bare.”

UPDATE 2: On Sept. 9, 2019, a multidistrict litigation over Facebook’s alleged data harvesting scandal has been mostly preserved by a California federal judge who said Facebook’s argument that users shouldn’t expect privacy is “so wrong.”