S.C. Shooting Survivor Sues Facebook, Google for Product Liability

Convicted shooter Dylann Roof was shown so much white supremacist propaganda online he believed the mass shooting he committed at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, S.C., “was necessary to spark a race war and save the white race.” So alleged a product liability complaint Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-01370) against Facebook, Google and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia-based Concord Management and Consulting in U.S. District Court for South Carolina in Charleston.

Plaintiff Felicia Sanders brings all actions on behalf of her granddaughter, a minor identified in the complaint as "K.M." Both were survivors of the 2015 mass shooting that killed nine while they attended bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church. They lived in Charleston then. Sanders’ son, Tywanza, and aunt, Susie Jackson, were among those killed in the shooting.

K.M., who watched her uncle die in front of her, suffered significant post-traumatic stress disorder after the incident and required long-term hospitalization and treatment, said the complaint. The suit seeks “accountability from those most responsible for placing Roof in that Church,” the complaint said, asserting the “massacre was the result of racial animus that occupied the mind of Roof.”

Roof’s formative years and familial environment didn’t include instruction on white supremacist ideology, said the complaint, citing comments by his father and uncle. Research shows Roof was "radicalized online by white supremacist propaganda,” it said. He was “groomed and aided" by the defendants, "who conspired together to target individuals like Roof who would be susceptible to online engagement with the kind of white supremacist propaganda and ideology that leads to offline violence,” the complaint said. The violence was “entirely foreseeable” to the defendants, it said, saying “hostile foreign actors were looking for new opportunities to cause civil unrest in the U.S. via social media and an increasingly influential online environment.”

Foreign actors “deliberately caused civil unrest in the U.S. by exploiting defective algorithms in social media platforms, that, combined with negligent social media product design, created an efficient form of influence over social media users that inherently drives an ever more extreme and emotional response in the individual,” leading to extreme, sometimes violent, action, it said.

In addition to product liability for a design defect, the lawsuit claims negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act. Plaintiff seeks an award of punitive and compensatory damages, including medical expenses, subrogation expenses, lost wages, loss of earning capacity, loss of enjoyment of life, future economic damages, general noneconomic damages, pain and suffering, and for personal injury in an amount to be determined by the "enlightened conscience of a jury."