Abdulaziz v. Twitter, Inc.
- Laurel Beeler
- 3:19-cv-06694
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Abdulaziz v. Twitter, Judge Beeler granted Twitter’s motion to dismiss and dismissed the Fourth Amended Complaint with prejudice for inadequate causation.
Omar Abdulaziz’s claims against Twitter, Inc.; the court dismissed the Fourth Amended Complaint with prejudice.
What happened
In Abdulaziz v. Twitter, Omar Abdulaziz alleged that Twitter employees, acting at the Saudi government’s direction, accessed his private account in 2015 and obtained personal information. He alleged that Saudi agents later hacked his phone in 2018 and targeted his family, and he sued Twitter over its employees’ conduct.
The court said Abdulaziz’s new allegations still did not plausibly connect the 2015 account access to the injuries caused by the 2018 phone hacking and related events. Without that connection, he lacked the required connection between Twitter’s conduct and his injury, and he also had not adequately pleaded causation for his negligence claims.
Judge Laurel Beeler granted Twitter’s motion to dismiss the Fourth Amended Complaint and dismissed the claims with prejudice because Abdulaziz had already been given an opportunity to amend but had not fixed the causation problems.
The detailed version
- Abdulaziz v. Twitter, Inc. · No. 3:19-cv-06694
- Laurel Beeler
- July 15, 2021
Background
Omar Abdulaziz alleged that former Twitter employees accessed Twitter accounts without authorization in June and July 2015, including his account, and obtained confidential information. He alleged that in 2018 Saudi operatives hacked his phone, spied on him, raided his family’s home, and imprisoned family members and friends. He claimed that he did not receive Twitter’s December 2015 notice that his account had been compromised.
In the Fourth Amended Complaint, Abdulaziz added allegations intended to connect the 2015 Twitter access to the 2018 events. He alleged that Twitter employees accessed direct messages involving another Saudi dissident, learned that Abdulaziz had information potentially damaging to the Saudi government, and thereby caused Saudi authorities to target him and his family in 2018. He also alleged that Twitter’s monitoring software would have detected the unauthorized access and that the employees had no legitimate business reason for accessing the accounts. He conceded dismissal of a separate claim under California Penal Code § 502(c).
Legal Standard and Analysis
The court had previously dismissed the case for failure to adequately plead causation for Article III standing and negligence, while allowing Abdulaziz to amend. Article III standing requires an injury that is fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged conduct. The court concluded that the three-year gap between the 2015 Twitter account compromise and the 2018 phone hack, along with Abdulaziz’s prior political persecution by the Saudi government, did not establish a sufficient causal connection. The new allegations about the Twitter employees’ access to direct messages and knowledge of Abdulaziz’s political activities did not change that conclusion.
The court also held that Abdulaziz had not adequately pleaded causation for negligence. Under the court’s explanation, negligence requires the defendant’s conduct to be both a factual cause of the injury and sufficiently connected to the injury to justify legal responsibility. Because Abdulaziz had not pleaded causation for standing, he had not pleaded causation for his negligence claims either.
Disposition
The court granted Twitter’s motion to dismiss the Fourth Amended Complaint. Because the court had previously allowed Abdulaziz to amend and he had not cured the causation deficiencies, the court dismissed the claims with prejudice. Judge Laurel Beeler stated that the order disposed of ECF No. 119.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.