BUFFALO, N.Y. — Several internet companies are asking a judge to dismiss the cases filed against them by the families of the victims and survivors of the May 14, 2022, mass shooting at the Tops Market on Jefferson Avenue.
Attorneys for several widely used social media platforms say the victims deserve empathy and compassion and that they certainly have theirs.
However, they contend that what the victims and their families do not have is a case, at least under applicable laws, which would hold them responsible for the actions of the shooter.
In a courtroom crowded with lawyers, attorneys for the victims and their families put forth several grounds for their case, including product liability.
In moving to dismiss, lawyers representing social media platforms argued not only can they not legally be held responsible for the actions of third parties using those platforms, but also that the platforms don't fit under the state's product liability statute, nor do they even meet the definition of a product under long established laws.
"Just because things may be different from 50 years ago doesn't mean it's not a product," plaintiffs attorney Diandra DeBrosse said. "Social media applications are a product. (Mata founder) Mark Zuckerberg calls it a product."
It is a product, note the plaintiffs, that doesn't come with a warning label and which is designed to addict its users and then repeatedly direct them to areas of interests.
This would include replacement theory, about which they say the confessed teenage shooter Peyton Gendron — through his visits to chat rooms — became radicalized, to the point where he decided to drive to Buffalo and kill Black people.
"Someone had to push Gendron down that rabbit hole he went to become the person that he was on that tragic day of May 14th," plaintiff attorney Andrew Debbins said. "That's why we allege it began with the social media defendants."
"It's difficult to hear and to remember what happened," said Garnell Whitfield Jr., who attended Friday's court session and whose mother was among the 10 victims murdered. "That's always going to be the case. But we are looking forward and we are looking to create a new day and a change," he said.
The plaintiffs also filed claims under New York State laws governing public nuisances, claiming there's a right safety from violence as a result of addiction by design, and privacy laws because the victim's murders were live streamed by the shooter.
Lawyers for the social media platforms contend there is nothing applicable in the public nuisance law, nor the privacy laws, and note the ones cited by the plaintiffs govern deaths involving celebrities.
All of this while reminding the judge that this case — as horrible and tragic as it is — is about the law, and insisting that the law requires her to summarily dismiss the claims against them.