Williams v. What If Holdings, LLC
- William Alsup
- 3:22-cv-03780
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 8
In Williams v. What If Holdings, Judge Alsup granted dismissal motions and denied arbitration as moot or waived in a screen-recording case.
Loretta Williams and the defendants, What If Holdings, LLC and ActiveProspect, Inc.; the order also addressed Williams’s putative class claims.
What happened
Williams v. What If Holdings, LLC involved Loretta Williams’s allegation that What If Holdings, LLC and ActiveProspect, Inc. used software to record her computer activity without consent. She brought claims under California’s wiretapping and unfair-competition laws and the California Constitution.
The court ruled that Williams did not plausibly allege that ActiveProspect was a third-party eavesdropper or that What If violated the wiretapping law. Because the other claims depended on that violation, the court dismissed all three claims. It also dismissed the unfair-competition claim without leave to amend because Williams acknowledged she had not lost money or property.
Judge William Alsup granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss and denied the motion to compel arbitration as moot or waived. Williams had 14 days to seek permission to file an amended complaint; otherwise, the case would be closed.
The detailed version
- Williams v. What If Holdings, LLC · No. 3:22-cv-03780
- William Alsup
- Dec. 22, 2022
Background
Loretta Williams alleged that, when she visited a website operated by What If Holdings, LLC, the website used ActiveProspect, Inc.’s TrustedForm software to record her keystrokes, mouse movements, clicks, and related visit information. She alleged that she did not consent. Her putative class action asserted three claims: wiretapping under the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL), and invasion of privacy under the California Constitution.
Both defendants moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint alleges enough facts to state a legally plausible claim. What If also moved to compel arbitration, and ActiveProspect joined that motion.
CIPA Wiretapping Claim
The court held that What If was the intended recipient of Williams’s communication because it operated the website. As a participant in the communication, What If could not be treated as an eavesdropper on its own communication. Its potential liability therefore depended on whether ActiveProspect had violated CIPA and whether What If had aided that violation.
The court concluded that Williams had not plausibly alleged that ActiveProspect was an independent third-party eavesdropper. The allegations showed that TrustedForm was deployed only on What If’s websites and that the software recorded and stored a four-second interaction with a single webpage. Williams did not allege that ActiveProspect processed, mined, or otherwise used the recorded information beyond storing it as part of the software’s operation. The court characterized TrustedForm as a recording tool rather than an eavesdropper and held that providing the software did not make ActiveProspect liable for wiretapping or make What If liable for aiding wiretapping.
The court dismissed the CIPA claim. Because it resolved the claim on that basis, it did not decide the issues of consent, whether the communications were intercepted while in transit, or whether the recorded data were protected content under CIPA.
UCL Claim
Williams asserted that the alleged CIPA violation was an unlawful business practice under the UCL. The court explained that this UCL theory depended on an underlying violation of another law. Because the CIPA claim failed, the UCL claim also failed. In addition, the court held that Williams lacked UCL standing because she conceded that she had not suffered a loss of money or property.
The court dismissed the UCL claim without leave to amend.
California Constitution Claim
Williams alleged an invasion of privacy under the California Constitution based on an interest in conducting personal activities without secret wiretaps. The court held that, because she had not plausibly pleaded wiretapping, she had not plausibly pleaded the legally protected privacy interest required for this claim. The court dismissed the constitutional claim.
Disposition
The court granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss. It denied the motion to compel arbitration as moot or waived. The order allowed Williams to seek leave to amend by filing, within 14 calendar days, a motion explaining how a proposed amended complaint would cure the identified deficiencies. If she did not file that motion by the deadline, the case would be closed.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.