A WilmerHale team led by Partners Sonal N. Mehta and David Gringer was recognized by American Lawyer Litigation Daily’s “Litigator of the Week” column for defeating a class certification in an antitrust class action on behalf of Meta on January 24, 2025.
The class action sought $52.8 Billion in damages, which would be trebled to $158.4 Billion, on behalf of a putative nationwide class of all Facebook users from 2016-2020. If the class had been certified, it would have been one of the largest – if not the largest – class ever certified in U.S. history at 220 million Facebook users.
The opinion is a groundbreaking decision on the question of damages in antitrust cases for free products and platforms.
The case, filed in 2020 in the Northern District of California just days before the FTC’s lawsuit against Facebook, alleged two core theories of monopolization under the Sherman Act on behalf of all Facebook users. The first theory claimed Facebook monopolized the personal social networking market by “copying, acquiring and killing” competitors, including Instagram and WhatsApp. In January 2022, the court dismissed those claims involving Facebook’s alleged strategy to shut out competitors and relating to Instagram and WhatsApp.
The second theory accused Facebook of maintaining a monopoly through misstatements about its privacy practices. Following discovery, the putative class of Facebook users sought class certification for all users from 2016 to 2020, relying on expert testimony that, without an illegal monopoly, Facebook would have to pay users $5 per month each to remain on the platform.
On January 24, Judge Donato of the Northern District of California excluded the opinions from the Facebook users’ expert as “a conclusion of fiat rather than evidence,” and on that basis denied Users’ motion for class certification.
The ruling is significant not only because it effectively ends the Users $158.4 billion claim at the district court level, but also because it reflects the first decision of a district court addressing antitrust injury and damages for zero-price products.
The WilmerHale team also included Alex Miller, Ryan Chabot, Zach Enos, Bryce Freeman, Karis Yi and Dan Toubman.