Judge declines to trim wrongful death lawsuit against Snapchat over fentanyl overdoses

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California Superior Court judge Wednesday rejected a request by Snap, Inc. to trim a lawsuit filed against the social media company over claims that Snapchat has become "a haven for drug trafficking," and that Snap regularly directs and recommends drug advertisements to minors.

The complaint for wrongful death, negligence and product liability, was first filed in 2022 by the parents and family members of 11 young people, mostly teenagers. The plaintiffs say their children bought fentanyl from drug dealers met over the Snapchat platform. All but one died.

"Despite Snap promoting and portraying Snapchat as a 'goofy' app for kids to use to send each other silly pictures, its known common use is as an 'open-air drug market,'" the plaintiffs say in the 215-page complaint. "Despite the fact that other social media products are equally — or more — popular than Snapchat among teen users, Snapchat is the go-to means to distribute drugs to children, teens, and young adults through social media and is involved in a far greater number of fentanyl poisoning deaths of U.S. teens than other social media apps."

Six similar suits, relating to 65 victims, have been filed against Snap. All of the plaintiffs in these cases are represented by lawyers from the Social Media Victims Law Center, and all are being heard by the same judge.

Founded in 2011 by a trio of Stanford students, Snapchat has, by its own estimates, 100 million daily users in North America. It is far less popular than Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and remains highly unprofitable, losing more than $1 billion every year.

The feature that has always differentiated Snapchat from other social media platforms has been the ephemeral nature of its posts and messages, which typically disappear after 24 hours.

"Snap’s ephemeral messaging feature, which automatically deletes messages after a set period of time, has become a popular tool for drug dealers to facilitate sales," the plaintiffs say in the complaint. "Because the messages disappear, it becomes more difficult for law enforcement to track down evidence of illegal activity."

The lead plaintiffs in the case are the parents of Alexander Neville, a 14-year-old boy living in Orange County, California, who, according to the complaint, died from a fentanyl overdose, after buying the pill from a Snapchat dealer named "Aj Smokxy." According to the complaint, even after Neville's death was made public, "Snap allowed AJ Smokxy to keep marketing and distributing his drugs through its platform — and Snap continued to profit from its casual partnership with him."

AJ Smokxy’s account remained active for nearly a year after Neville's death, and the account was linked to two more deaths, according to the complaint.

Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff ruled that Snap could not claim immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which typically shields social media platforms from liability for content its users post), because the allegations in the complaint "do not purport to impose liability upon Snap for publishing or failing to moderate the drug sellers' content (i.e., to 'treat Snap as a publisher') but instead on account of its alleged independent tortious conduct —independent, that is, of the drug sellers' posted content."

Though Riff allowed most of the lawsuit to go forward, he did agree to dismiss some of the causes of action, including one for public nuisance, ruling that the rights being violated were not public, but "personal in nature."

Snap has said it plans to appeal the ruling.

Before that ruling came out, Snap took the unusually aggressive step of filing a motion for sanctions, in an effort to throw out just 35 out of 991 paragraphs of the complaint, arguing that they were "false and inflammatory."

"These 35 paragraphs cross the line from zealous advocacy into alleging false statements," said Snap's attorney, Jessica Grant, during oral arguments on Wednesday. "Some are very serious and inflammatory — alleging that we promote drugs to children, that we don’t cooperate with law enforcement."

The motion was essentially a motion to strike dressed up as one for sanctions. When considering a motion to strike, a judge must assume that all the facts alleged in the complaint are true. Since Snap wanted certain allegations thrown out because they were false, it filed a motion for sanctions as a kind of workaround.

"No reasonable attorney would allege Snap markets drugs to kids," said Grant. "Where is the evidence? Where is the factual basis to support the allegation that Snap itself is targeting illegal drugs to kids? They didn’t provide you with any."

Glenn Draper, an attorney for the Social Media Victims Law Center who is representing the plaintiffs, argued that the issue was one of semantics.

"We don’t ever say Snap was accepting paid advertisements from drug dealers," Draper said. "What we are saying is that drug menus are prevalent in a variety of ways. We call those drug menus 'advertisements.'"

Judge Riff began his ruling, which was to overrule the motion, with a soliloquy that, by his own admission, sounded like the opening to the long-running television series, "Law and Order."

"In our system of justice, we have and want to have a wide open door to the courthouse so that people who claim to have suffered a legal harm have a place to go to seek a remedy," Riff said. "The reason there's a very low threshold to walk in and make an allegation is that we want a dispute resolved through the judicial process, and not through self-help or violence."

He said that at this early stage in the case, prior to discovery, prior to a motion for summary judgment and well before a jury trial, he had to take the allegations as true. He denied the motion without prejudice, which means Snap can refile the motion later, perhaps after discovery, with a different legal argument.

Riff and the lawyers also discussed the future of the cases — especially how to proceed with discovery and trial, what with seven different complaints and 65 different claimants who may have similar allegations but varying personal stories. Some are minors, some aren't. Some knew their drug dealers personally, some didn't. Some were using other drugs, like cocaine, in addition to fentanyl at the time of their overdose. Some even lived in states other than California.

"That is what sent a cold shudder down my neck," said Riff, at one point. "I shudder to think about instructing a jury on different states’ laws."

Though the cases are currently divided into seven lawsuits, it's unlikely that they will go to trial in that format. There will likely be motions to sever certain plaintiffs and consolidate others. One likely scenario is that a first bellwether trial will be held to test the strength of each side's case, followed by a possible settlement of the rest of cases based on the trial's outcome. The plaintiff attorneys suggested that the Neville suit should be that bellwether case. Snap disagreed, and suggested that the bellwether case have just one plaintiff.

Though that bridge is far from being crossed, Riff couldn't resist telling the attorneys how he was leaning.

"All other things being equal," he told the court, "I am inclined to have a more-than-one plaintiff initial bellwether trial. Snap, I know you're opposed to this."

"My instinct, so far, is that while there will be a lot of individualized proof, there will be a lot of common proof," he added. "And if the goal is indeed to get some jury verdicts in order to value cases for the possibility of resolution, it’s just an efficient way to go."

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Judge declines to trim wrongful death lawsuit against Snapchat over fentanyl overdoses

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