Susman's Sex-Trafficking Suit Against Pornhub Headed for Discovery
Despite the company's argument that Section 230 shielded it from liability for sex trafficking claims stemming from underage content uploaded by others, a Southern California judge let the proposed class action move forward.
September 08, 2021 at 07:30 AM
6 minute read
Back at the beginning of the summer, the Litigation Daily highlighted a lawsuit filed against Mindgeek, the parent company behind the porn website Pornhub and various other adult sites, brought by lawyers at Brown Rudnick on behalf of 34 individuals who say they are the victims of sex trafficking. That lawsuit, filed in the Central District of California, claimed the company created "a bustling marketplace for child pornography, rape videos, trafficked videos, and every other form of nonconsensual content."
What we neglected to tell you at the time was that Mindgeek and some of its affiliates had already been hit with a proposed class action in the Central District that was also backed by significant legal firepower. A Susman Godfrey team led by partners Arun Subramanian, Krysta Kauble Pachman and Davida Brook filed suit in February alongside local counsel at Pollock Cohen on behalf of a Jane Doe plaintiff who alleged an ex-boyfriend surreptitiously recorded the two of them having sex when she was 16 years old and uploaded videos to company websites. It was the Susman Godfrey-backed suit, which seeks to certify a class of anyone who had images or video from when they were under age 18 uploaded to the company's sites over the past ten years, that generated the first significant ruling allowing sex-trafficking claims against Mindgeek to survive a motion to dismiss.
U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney in Santa, Ana, California, on Friday rejected arguments put forward by defense lawyers at Dechert who claimed that the Mindgeek defendants fell under the broad immunities Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants to websites for civil liability for user-generated content. Carney determined the lawsuit triggered an exemption to Section 230 passed by Congress in 2018 that made it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate or support sex trafficking. The law, Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act/Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or FOSTA/SESTA, amended Section 230's safe harbors to allow enforcement of sex trafficking laws. The federal sex trafficking law, the judge pointed out, makes it illegal for anyone to knowingly benefit financially from anyone under 18 participating in a commercial sex act.
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