The plaintiffs sufficiently alleged that Google and YouTube engaged in highly offensive behavior in collecting children’s information without informing parents or obtaining their consent, Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said Monday in allowing their claims of intrusion upon seclusion to survive.
She also allowed their claims under the consumer-protection statutes of Indiana, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to survive for the purpose of damages, along with their equitable relief-claims under the statutes of Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. The ruling comes six months after van Keulen dismissed the lawsuit but gave the plaintiffs’ limited leave to amend their complaint
The judge threw out the plaintiffs’ unjust-enrichment claims and their claims under the consumer-protection statutes of seven other states, and dismissed all claims against the channel-owner defendants, including Cartoon Network Inc.,
The parents and legal guardians of minors who watched YouTube videos filed the lawsuit in 2019, alleging Google collected their children’s information without parental consent, and caused injury by reducing the value of their children’s information.
Judge Beth Labson Freeman tossed two earlier versions of the lawsuit, holding that the plaintiffs’ claims were pre-empted by the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The Ninth Circuit reversed the second of her dismissal orders, holding that the COPPA didn’t pre-empt state-law causes of action that proscribed the same conduct as the federal statute.
Freeman recused herself in an April 2024 order, and the case was re-assigned to van Keulen.
Highly Offensive
Van Keulen’s previous dismissal of the suit was based in part on a finding that the plaintiffs failed to show Google’s conduct was highly offensive as required to state a claim of intrusion upon seclusion, but the judge said they cured the defect by alleging in their sixth amended complaint that Google targeted children through YouTube and knew it was collecting their data in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
“The court cannot conclude, as a matter of law, that knowingly violating a law does not constitute highly offensive behavior,” she said Monday.
Google argued in its most recent motion to dismiss that its conduct wasn’t highly offensive because it was disclosed in its privacy policies and terms of service, but van Keulen disagreed, finding that Google didn’t provide a reason at the pleading stage to conclude the plaintiffs were on notice of the terms.
She dismissed the unjust-enrichment claims because she said the plaintiffs failed to address Google’s arguments in their response to the company’s motion.
The claims against the channel owners failed because the plaintiffs didn’t sufficiently allege that the channel owners collected the plaintiffs’ data, aided and abetted Google’s collection of the data, or violated the COPPA, van Keulen said.
Silver Golub & Teitell LLP and Pritzker Levine LLP represent the plaintiffs.
Hogan Lovells US LLP represents Google. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represents Cartoon Network. Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP represents Mattel. Zwilligen Law LLP represents DreamWorks. Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC represents Hasbro. Venable LLP represents PocketWatch. Jacobson, Russell, Saltz, Nassim & de la Torre LLP represent RTR Production.
The case is Hubbard v. Google LLC, N.D. Cal., No. 5:19-cv-07016, 1/13/25.