SAN FRANCISCO – The California federal judge overseeing the lawsuit from Adult Performance Artists Guild executives Alana Evans, Kelly Pierce and Ruby alleging that Meta conspired with OnlyFans to blacklist the talent of rival premium fan platforms , said during a hearing Wednesday that he thought the failure to archive the List of Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) sounded “nefarious.”
As XBIZ reported, the three APAG officials told the court in March that while they wanted to drop their lawsuit over a venue issue, they could still file antitrust claims in the future.
Evans, Pierce and Ruby originally filed the civil lawsuit in February 2022 against OnlyFans and its owner, as well as Instagram and Facebook’s parent company, Meta. The lawsuit replicated claims from an earlier lawsuit filed on behalf of FanCentro in November 2021, which alleged a conspiracy to engage in “tortious interference with contracts and intentional interference with potential business.”
Wednesday’s hearing was part of a current dispute between the plaintiffs, who want to drop the current case in a way that allows them to refile it, and Meta, who is asking the judge to grant summary judgment in favor of the company to express.
The plaintiffs claim that Meta informed them that the company “has found no evidence that a competing platform is currently listed or nominated for inclusion.”
According to their motion, “based on the information provided by Meta Defendants, the information essential to Plaintiffs’ class allegations is not available,” making further discovery efforts “futile.”
At this week’s hearing, U.S. District Judge William Alsup questioned plaintiffs’ attorneys’ strategy for not deposing Meta’s offered witnesses, but reserved his strongest language to criticize the tech giant for its peculiar methods of keeping records regarding updates and changes to its controversial DOI. black list.
The reprimand followed Meta’s attorney K. Winn Allen explaining to Judge Alsup that Meta “has a collaborative review process before adding new users to Meta’s DOI list, which includes Meta’s content team, policy team, communications team and legal departments,” legal Affairs. news site Law 360 reported.
Meta produced only selected old versions of the DOI lists included in the email communications revealed during the discovery.
The judge added that it bothers him that a large company like Meta would not have a protocol to regularly store and archive the different versions of its DOI list.
“That seems disgraceful to me, that you would destroy evidence before it is needed,” Judge Alsup told Meta’s lawyers when it was suggested that the list was a living document, always mutating. Instead, he said, “the list doesn’t live, it dies every day.”
Judge Alsup seemed particularly baffled by the practice of not maintaining records because of his background as a corporate attorney familiar with compliance issues.
“My god, why don’t they keep that?” he said when he looked at the statements of Meta’s lawyers. “If I were a lawyer, I would advise them to keep the document,” especially to share updates to the DOI list with law enforcement agencies.
“So you see I’m suspicious,” Judge Alsup told Allen. “Your explanation raises more questions than it answers.”
Prosecutors celebrated the judge’s comments as a victory.
“I’m glad the judge has as much trouble as we think the data doesn’t exist,” Evans told XBIZ. “I hope this will develop further.”