Doe v. MySpace

A minor female registered with MySpace and contacted a nineteen-year-old male through the site. They agreed to meet, and he sexually assaulted her. The minor and her mother sued MySpace and its parent, News Corp., for negligence, fraud, and negligent misrepresentation. The plaintiffs first filed a lawsuit in Texas state court. They voluntarily dismissed that action and refiled in New York state court. The defendants removed the action to federal court in New York, and that court transferred the action to federal court in Texas.

The defendants moved to dismiss, and the federal court in Texas dismissed the claims on CDA 230 grounds. This is interesting, because the plaintiffs had characterized the lawsuit as a safety issue, alleging that MySpace did not provide proper protection for minors. Since the CDA applies primarily to publication torts, it was not clear how it would apply here. The court ultimately determined that, regardless of how well the plaintiffs disguised the issues in their complaint, the dispute was over content published on MySpace and a lack of filtering or screening on the part of the site -- which are prime CDA issues. See Doe v. MySpace, 474 F.Supp.2d 843 (W.D. Tex. 2007).

Plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the case still was pending as of 04/24/08.