Facebook wins dismissal of $15 bln users' privacy suit — Bloomberg

U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila in San Jose, California, on Friday agreed with Facebook's argument that case should be dismissed because subscribers didn't specify how they were harmed. The judge, who took more than three years to issue his ruling after hearing arguments in the case, said the users could refile most of their claims in a revised lawsuit, as reported by Bloomberg.

Facebook users alleged in a 2012 complaint that while they may have agreed to the company's installation of "cookie" files on their computers to track and transmit their Web browsing, they didn't consent to such monitoring after logging out of the social network. The lawsuit consolidated similar complaints filed on behalf of U.S. residents who subscribed to Facebook from May 2010 to September 2011 in 10 states, including California, Texas and Alabama.

In the San Jose case, the plaintiffs accused Facebook of violating the U.S. Wiretap Act by monitoring their online activity while they weren't logged on. They also accused Facebook of improperly profiting from their information.

The judge said the users failed to "adequately connect" the value of the data collected by Facebook "to a realistic economic harm or loss." Specifically, the plaintiffs failed to show "they personally lost the opportunity to sell their information or that the value of their information was somehow diminished after it was collected by Facebook," Davila said.

Davila gave the plaintiffs until November 30 to revise their claims, including invasion of privacy and alleged violations of the Wiretap Act. That law provides for damages of as much as $100 a violation per day for each Facebook user, according to the complaint. Based on an estimate of 150 million affected users, the plaintiffs calculated potential damages of $15 billion.