In any of the Five Eyes jurisdictions, I am seeking more reported cases like Jason L. Crawford, vs. Meta Platforms Inc., d/b/a Facebook, Civil Action No. SC2022CV001070 filed at State Court of Muscogee County, Georgia. The defendant can be any service provider, not just Meta Platforms Inc. Judge Andrew Prather made “the following findings of fact and conclusions of law:”
In or around August of 2022, Defendant terminated Plaintiff’s Facebook account for no valid reason. Defendant failed to allow Plaintiff to obtain an explanation for the termination, except for vague pieces of information purportedly accusing Plaintiff of some sort of exploitative behavior on the site. This behavior never occurred, and Facebook's conduct was undertaken in violation of the site's duty to exercise ordinary care towards its customers. This is specifically true since Facebook knows that it is often the repository of large amounts of date, in the form of photographs, videos and narrative content. Plaintiff had much of the data documenting his life for the last thirteen years on his Facebook page.
Defendant failed to do a reasonable job of training its employees or programming its algorithms in order to fairly assess whether users actually violated Facebook's terms of service. Facebook likewise failed to do a reasonable job of allowing users to question and/or appeal the seemingly random, but definitely unsupported, findings of Face books algorithms. Consequently, Plaintiff has been denied access to photographs, data, and content documenting the last decade-plus of his life.
Plaintiff's injuries and damages, as hereinabove described, were directly and proximately caused by the negligence of Defendant. The Court concludes that Plaintiff has endured great mental pain since Facebook unjustifiably and unreasonably shut down his account and that his pain and suffering will likely continue. The Court further concludes that Plaintiff is entitled to just and adequate compensation for his injuries and for his past and future damages.
JUDGMENT
It is therefore ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that the Plaintiff Jason L. Crawford have and recover judgment against Defendant damages in the sum of $50,000.00, as damages to compensate him for his injuries, including past and future mental pain and suffering. Costs of bringing this action are hereby assessed against Defendant.
