SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California dismissed this week the lawsuit filed by three performers in 2022 claiming that Meta conspired with OnlyFans to blacklist rival premium fan platforms’ talent.
The dismissal occurred two weeks before the case was due to go to trial.
As XBIZ reported, in May, Adult Performance Artists Guild board officers Alana Evans, Kelly Pierce and Ruby filed the civil lawsuit in February 2022 against OnlyFans and its owner, as well as against Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. The suit replicated claims from an earlier lawsuit filed on behalf of FanCentro in November 2021, alleging a conspiracy to engage in “tortious interference with contract and intentional interference with prospective business.”
U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a written ruling granting Meta’s motion for summary judgment “because the professional adult entertainers who brought the suit had not produced the evidence necessary to support their case,” legal news site Law360 reported.
“There is no claim left to try,” the judge wrote. “Given that plaintiffs have been unable to produce the predicate data to move past the summary-judgment stage, judgment shall be entered accordingly.”
Although Alsup said during a May hearing that the tech giant’s lack of archiving of its “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” (DOI) list sounded “nefarious,” his dismissal stated that ultimately “the plaintiffs have developed no proof sufficient to go to a jury on any of these claims.”
Since March, the plaintiffs have been seeking to drop the lawsuit, telling the court that “based on the information Meta defendants provided, the information essential to plaintiffs’ class allegations is not available,” making further discovery efforts “futile.” This was after Meta informed them that the company “found no evidence that any competitor platform was currently on the list, or had been nominated for inclusion,” according to the plaintiffs’ motion.
Until this week’s ruling, the plaintiffs were seeking to drop the suit in such a way as to leave open the possibility of future antitrust claims. Disputing this, Meta asked the judge to instead issue a summary judgment in the company’s favor, which was granted this week.
Alsup wrote that he had no choice but to grant Meta’s motion for summary judgment “in spite of and not because of the questionable record keeping.”
“We were not expecting this at all,” Evans told XBIZ. “We have been in settlement talks with Instagram for the last few months, but when they refused to include any other performers in the settlement, we weren’t willing to leave the rest of our class behind, so we were looking forward to going to trial in mid-October. We’re really shocked and disappointed by the judge’s decision.”
