Marek v. Lane
| Citation | 571 U.S. 1003,187 L.Ed.2d 392,134 S.Ct. 8 (Mem) |
| Decision Date | 04 November 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 13–136.,13–136. |
| Parties | Megan MAREK v. Sean LANE, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, et al. |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.
Statement of Chief Justice ROBERTS respecting the denial of certiorari.
In November 2007, respondent Facebook, Inc., released a program called "Beacon." It worked like this: Whenever someone visited the Web site of a participating company and performed a "trigger" activity, such as posting a comment or buying a product, the program would automatically report the activity and the user's personally identifiable information to Facebook—regardless of whether the user was a Facebook member. If the user was a Facebook member, Facebook would publish the activity on his member profile and broadcast it to everyone in his "friends" network. So rent a movie from Blockbuster.com, and all your friends would know the title. Or plan a vacation on Hotwire.com, and all your friends would know the destination. To prevent Facebook from posting a particular trigger activity, a member had to affirmatively opt out by clicking an icon in a pop-up window that appeared for about ten seconds after he performed the activity.
Beacon resulted in the dissemination of large amounts of information Facebook members allegedly did not intend to share, provoking a public outcry against Beacon and Facebook. Facebook responded about a month after Beacon's launch by changing the program's default setting from opt out to opt in, so that any given trigger activity would not appear on a member's profile unless the member explicitly consented. Facebook also allowed its members to disable Beacon altogether.
In August 2008, 19 individuals brought a putative class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Facebook and the companies that had participated in Beacon, alleging violations of various federal and state privacy laws. The putative class comprised only those individuals whose personal information had been obtained and disclosed by Beacon during the approximately one-month period in which the program's default setting was opt out rather than opt in. The complaint sought damages and various forms of equitable relief, including an injunction barring the defendants from continuing the program.
In the end, the vast majority of Beacon's victims got neither remedy. The named plaintiffs reached a settlement agreement with the defendants before class certification. Although Facebook promised to discontinue the "Beacon" program itself, plaintiffs' counsel conceded at the fairness hearing in the District Court that nothing in the settlement would preclude Facebook from reinstituting the same program with a new name. See Tr. 18 (Feb. 26, 2010) () ("At the end of the day, we could not reach agreement with defendants regarding limiting their future actions as a corporation").
And while Facebook also agreed to pay $9.5 million, the parties allocated that fund in an unusual way. Plaintiffs' counsel were awarded nearly a quarter of the fund in fees and costs, while the named plaintiffs received modest incentive...
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