E-Commerce App Found Not Liable for Murders in Section 230 Case

The online marketplace Letgo isn’t liable for the murders of a husband and wife who were killed when trying to buy a used car through the platform, the U.S. District Court for Colorado ruled in a Dec. 5 decision (docket 22-cv-00899). Though the court sided with the company in dismissing the case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty said Letgo isn’t entitled to liability protection under Communications Decency Act Section 230 at this stage.

Hegarty described the murders as “shocking and heartbreaking” but said the couple’s estate failed to state a claim under common law and Colorado law theories. Joseph and Jossline Roland, parents of five children, were trying to buy a car for their eldest daughter, according to the decision, contacting a man named Kyree Brown, who posted a used car ad on the platform using the fake name James Worthy. The Rolands met Brown late at night at a “well-lighted shopping center” without knowing the car was stolen. According to the court, when the couple arrived, Brown told them he had the wrong car title and asked them to follow him to his apartment to get the proper title. When they arrived, Brown tried to rob them at gunpoint. Joseph Roland tried to disarm Brown, and Brown murdered the couple.

The Rolands’ estate sued Letgo and parent company OfferUp, alleging they misled consumers by saying they verified identities of those posting ads on the platform. The company’s verification of Brown “objectively signaled that the advertiser was a known person who was sincerely trying to sell something,” the estate argued. The plaintiffs filed claims of negligence, gross negligence, fraud, negligent misrepresentation and wrongful trade practices under the Colorado Consumer Protections Act, loss of consortium and wrongful death. Letgo claimed immunity under Section 230. Letgo doesn’t comment on litigation, the company said in a statement Monday.

The plaintiffs didn’t cite a “single case in which a court held an internet platform potentially liable for violent criminal acts perpetrated by a platform user who lured an innocent consumer into a scheme through means of misrepresentations made by the criminal,” Hegarty wrote in his opinion. “It would be too much of a stretch under their tort and [Colorado Consumer Protection Act] CCPA theories to do so here.” No “reasonable” jury could conclude the company was the “predominant cause” of the Rolands’ deaths, wrote Hegarty: “Under any analysis, the predominant and intervening cause was Brown's independent actions.”

Hegarty said the plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded that the company “contributed in part to the allegedly offending ‘verified’ representation” of Brown on the platform. Therefore at this stage in the case, the company isn’t entitled to Section 230 immunity, he said: But whether this “claim could withstand a motion for summary judgment, of course, is not before me.” Hegarty noted Brown verified his account using an actual phone number, as required by the company. But it would be “pure speculation” to try to decipher what this level of verification meant to the Rolands when attempting to make the purchase, he said. An attorney representing the Rolands’ estate didn’t comment.