On Monday, Facebook temporarily kept at bay a collective lawsuit valued at up to 3 billion pounds following allegations that the social media company took advantage of its dominant position to make money from its users’ data.
The London tribunal listening to the case gave the claimants’ lawyers up to six months to try to establish the losses by users. Meta Platforms, the company that owns the Facebook group, is bracing for mass legal action brought on behalf of 45 million of its British Facebook users.
Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, the legal academic bringing the case, says that Facebook users were not appropriately compensated for the value of the personal data they provided to the platform.
Gormsen has six months to refine her case
Last month, her lawyers requested the Competition Appeal Tribunal to certify the case under the UK’s collective procedures scheme, essentially equal to the US class action regime.
The Tribunal, however, ruled on Monday that Lovdahl Gormsen’s methodology for calculating any losses suffered by Facebook users required “root-and-branch re-evaluation” for the case to proceed.
Judge Marcus Smith did, however, offer Lovdahl Gormsen’s attorneys six months to “file additional evidence setting out a new and better blueprint leading to an effective trial.”
Europeans could lose Facebook and Instagram if data transfers are deemed illegal
A representative for Meta said the business appreciated the judgment and referred to its previous comments that the complaint is “entirely without merit.” Lovdahl Gormsen’s spokeswoman declined to respond.
Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram could be forced to stop sending European users’ data to the US in the next two months. A binding decision on a case examining Meta’s data transfers to the US will be issued by April 14. Meta previously stated that it would go dark in Europe if regulators decided its legal basis for data transfer is illegal.
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