Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-56638/USCOURTS-ca9-12-56638-2/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 

---

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

JANE DOE NO. 14,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

INTERNET BRANDS, INC.,

DBA Modelmayhem.com,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 12-56638

D.C. No.

2:12-cv-03626-JFW-PJW

ORDER AND OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

John F. Walter, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted February 7, 2014

Opinion withdrawn February 24, 2015

Re-argued and Submitted April 8, 2015

Pasadena, California

Filed May 31, 2016

Before: Mary M. Schroeder and Richard R. Clifton, Circuit

Judges, and Brian M. Cogan, District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge Clifton

* The Honorable Brian M. Cogan, District Judge for the U.S. District

Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 1 of 17
2 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

SUMMARY**

Communications Decency Act

The panel withdrew the opinion filed on September 17,

2014, and in a superseding opinion reversed the district

court’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) dismissal, as barred by the

Communications Decency Act, of an action against Internet

Brands, Inc. alleging liability for negligence under California

law based on a failure to warn; and remanded for further

proceedings.

Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act

provides that “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no

liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is

inconsistent with this section.”

Plaintiff Jane Doe sought to hold Internet Brands liable

for failing to warn her about information it obtained from an

outside source about how third parties targeted and lured

victimsthrough Internet Brand’s website modelmayhem.com,

a networking website for people in the modeling industry.

The panel held that the Communications DecencyAct did

not bar Jane Doe’s failure to warn claim under California law. 

The panel concluded that Jane Doe’s negligent failure to warn

claim did not seek to hold Internet Brands liable as the

“publisher or speaker of any information provided by another

information content provider,” 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1), and

therefore the Communications Decency Act did not bar the

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 2 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 3

claim. The panel expressed no opinion on the viability of the

failure to warn allegations on the merits.

COUNSEL

Jeffrey Herman (argued) and Stuart S. Mermelstein, Herman

Law, Boca Raton, Florida, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Daniel P. Collins (argued), Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, Los

Angeles, California; Jonathan H. Blavin, Munger, Tolles &

Olson LLP, San Francisco, California; Wendy E. Giberti,

iGeneral Counsel, P.C., Beverly Hills, California; Patrick

Fraioli, Ervin Cohen &Jessup LLP, BeverlyHills, California,

for Defendant-Appellee.

Patrick J. Carome (argued), Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale

and Dorr LLP, Washington, D.C.; Felicia H. Ellsworth and

Brook Hopkins, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr,

Boston, Massachusetts, for Amici Curiae The Computer and

Communications Industry Association; The Internet

Association; Care.com, Inc.; Craigslist, Inc.; Facebook, Inc.;

IAC/Interactivecorp; and Tumblr, Inc.

ORDER

By order entered February 24, 2015, Defendant-Appellee

Internet Brands Inc.’s Petition for Rehearing, filed October

31, 2014, was granted, the Petition for Rehearing En Banc

was denied as moot, the opinion filed on September 17, 2014

was withdrawn, and the case scheduled for a new oral

argument.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 3 of 17
4 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

An opinion is filed together with this order. Subsequent

petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc may be filed.

OPINION

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge:

Model Mayhem is a networking website, found at

modelmayhem.com, for people in the modeling industry.

Plaintiff Jane Doe, an aspiringmodel who posted information

about herself on the website, alleges that two rapists used the

website to lure her to a fake audition, where they drugged her,

raped her, and recorded her for a pornographic video. She

also alleges that Defendant Internet Brands, the company that

owns the website, knew about the rapists but did not warn her

or the website’s other users. She filed an action against

Internet Brands alleging liability for negligence under

California law based on that failure to warn.

The district court dismissed the action on the ground that

her claim was barred by the Communications Decency Act

(“CDA”), 47 U.S.C. § 230(c) (2012). We conclude that the

CDA does not bar the claim. We reverse and remand for

further proceedings.

I. Background

At the motion to dismiss stage, we assume factual

allegations stated in the Complaint filed by Plaintiff to be

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 4 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 5

true.1Sprewell v. Golden State Warriors, 266 F.3d 979, 988

(9th Cir. 2001). Plaintiff alleges that Internet Brands owns

and operates the website modelmayhem.com, which it

purchased in 2008. Model Mayhem is a networking site for

professional and aspiring models to market their services. It

has over 600,000 members. Plaintiff Jane Doe, a fictitious

name, was an aspiring model who became a member of

Model Mayhem.

Unbeknownst to Jane Doe, two persons, Lavont Flanders

and Emerson Callum, were using Model Mayhem to identify

targets for a rape scheme, allegedly as early as 2006. Flanders

and Callum are not alleged to have posted their own profiles

on the website. Instead, they browsed profiles on Model

Mayhem posted by models, contacted potential victims with

fake identities posing as talent scouts, and lured the victims

to south Florida for modeling auditions. Once a victim

arrived, Flanders and Callum used a date rape drug to put her

in a semi-catatonic state, raped her, and recorded the activity

on videotape for sale and distribution as pornography.

In 2008, Internet Brands purchased Model Mayhem from

Donald and Taylor Waitts, the original developers of the site.

Shortly after the purchase, Internet Brands learned of how

Flanders and Callum were using the website. It is not alleged

precisely how Internet Brands obtained that information, but

it is alleged that the company “as early as August, 2010,

knew that two individuals, Lavont Flanders and Emerson

Callum, had been criminally charged in this scheme, and

further knew from the criminal charges, the particular details

1 Given the serious nature of the allegations, we note that Internet

Brands has specifically denied substantially all of the allegations,

including that the assailants contacted Plaintiff through the website.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 5 of 17
6 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

of the scheme, including how MODELMAYHEM.COM had

been used in the scheme and its members victimized.”

Specifically, it is alleged that Internet Brands knew that:

a. Lavont Flanders and Emerson

Ca l l um w o u l d c o n t a c t f ema l e

MODELMAYHEM.COM members, using

fake identities, disguised as talent scouts.

b. Lavont Flanders and Emerson Callum

would lure female MODELMAYHEM.COM

members to South Florida to participate in

fake auditions for a fraudulent modeling

contract opportunity.

c. Lavont Flanders and Emerson

Callum would drug the female

MODELMAYHEM.COM members with a

date-rape drug during the fake audition.

d. Emerson Callum would then rape the

unknowingly drugged women.

e. Lavont Flanders and Emerson Callum

would record the rape on video camera.

f. Lavont Flanders and Emerson Callum

would produce the rape videos and distribute

the video on the internet, guised as consensual

hardcore pornography.

It is also alleged that Internet Brands sued the Waitts in

August 2010 for failing to disclose the potential for civil suits

arising from the activities of Flanders and Callum.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 6 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 7

The reference to criminal charges suggests that the

information was obtained by Internet Brands from an outside

source, not from monitoring postings on the Model Mayhem

website. As noted above, Flanders and Callum did not post on

the website.

In February 2011, several months after Internet Brands

had learned about the criminal activity, Flanders, pretending

to be a talent scout and using a false identity, contacted Jane

Doe, in the words of the Complaint, “through” the Model

Mayhem website.2

Jane Doe went to south Florida for a

purported audition, where Flanders and Callum drugged,

raped, and recorded her.

Jane Doe filed this diversity action against Internet

Brands in the Central District of California, where Internet

Brands is based, asserting one count of negligent failure to

warn under California law. She alleges that Internet Brands

knew about the activities of Flanders and Callum but failed to

warn Model Mayhem users that they were at risk of being

victimized. She further alleges that this failure to warn caused

her to be a victim of the rape scheme.

Internet Brands filed a motion to dismiss the action under

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), on the ground that

her claim was barred by the CDA. The district court granted

the motion to dismiss and dismissed the action with

prejudice. It denied leave to amend the complaint on the

2

Internet Brands has contended that Jane Doe was contacted directly by

her assailants, not through the website. At oral argument, counsel for Jane

Doe may have agreed that the contact was outside the website. This

distinction does not affect our conclusion.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 7 of 17
8 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

ground that any amendment would be futile. Jane Doe

appeals.

II. Discussion

We review de novo a district court’s decision to grant a

motion to dismiss. Edwards v. Marin Park, Inc., 356 F.3d

1058, 1061 (9th Cir. 2004). We also review de novo

questions of statutory interpretation. United States v. Harvey,

659 F.3d 1272, 1274 (9th Cir. 2011).

California law imposes a duty to warn a potential victim

of third-party harm when a person has a “special relationship

to either the person whose conduct needs to be controlled or

. . . to the foreseeable victim of that conduct.” Tarasoff v.

Regents of Univ. of California, 17 Cal.3d 425, 435 (1976),

superseded by statute, Cal. Civ. Code § 43.92. Jane Doe

alleges that Internet Brands had a cognizable “special

relationship” with her and that its failure to warn her of

Flanders and Callum’s rape scheme caused her to fall victim

to it. Internet Brands argues that the CDA precludes the

claim. Although we assume that Internet Brands may contest

the scope of the duty to warn under California law and, in

particular, the existence of the required special relationship,

that issue is not before us. The dismissal of the action by the

district court was based entirely on the CDA.

The question before us, therefore, is whether the CDA

bars Jane Doe’s negligent failure to warn claim under

California law. We begin with the language of the statute.

Campbell v. Allied Van Lines Inc., 410 F.3d 618, 620 (9th

Cir. 2005).

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 8 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 9

Section 230(c) of the CDA, is titled “Protection for ‘Good

Samaritan’ blocking and screening of offensive material.” It

provides two types of protection from civil liability, but only

the first type is relevant to this case:

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker

No provider or user of an interactive computer

service shall be treated as the publisher or

speaker of any information provided by

another information content provider.

The preemptive effect of this subsection is express: “No

cause of action may be brought and no liability may be

imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with

this section.” Section 230(e)(3).

Separated into its elements, subsection (c)(1) precludes

liability for “(1) a provider or user of an interactive computer

service (2) whom a plaintiff seeks to treat, under a state law

cause of action, as a publisher or speaker (3) of information

provided by another information content provider.” Barnes v.

Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096, 1100–01 (9th Cir. 2009)

(footnote omitted). Thus, section 230(c)(1) precludes liability

that treats a website as the publisher or speaker of

information users provide on the website. In general, this

section protects websites from liability for material posted on

the website by someone else.

The first element is satisfied in this case because Internet

Brands is a provider of an interactive computer service as that

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 9 of 17
10 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

term is defined in section 230(f)(2).3 The essential question,

then, is whether Plaintiff’s failure to warn cause of action

“inherently requires the court to treat” Internet Brands “as a

publisher or speaker” “of information provided by another

information content provider.” Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1100–02.

Put differently, the case turns on whether it would be

inconsistent with section 230(c)(1) for the State of California

to require an interactive computer service provider to warn its

users about the threat of a known sexual predator.

A clear illustration of a cause of action that treats a

website proprietor as a publisher is a defamation action

founded on the hosting of defamatory third-party content.

See, e.g., Carafano v. Metrosplash.com, Inc., 339 F.3d 1119

(9th Cir. 2003). In such circumstances, the protections of

section 230(c)(1) apply, and they continue to apply even if

the website proprietor has not acted to remove offensive

content posted by others. For example, this court has held that

the CDA barred a negligent undertaking claim against a

website that failed to remove an offensive profile posted on

the website by the victim’s ex-boyfriend. Barnes, 570 F.3d at

1101–03. Such liability, the court explained, would “treat”

the website as the “publisher” of user content because

“removing content is something publishers do” and to permit

liability for such conduct “necessarily involves treating the

liable party as a publisher of the content it failed to remove.”

Id. at 1103.

3

“The term ‘interactive computer service’ means any information

service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables

computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including

specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and

such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational

institutions.” Section 230(f)(2).

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 10 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 11

Jane Doe’s claim is different, however. She does not seek

to hold Internet Brands liable as a “publisher or speaker” of

content someone posted on the Model Mayhem website, or

for Internet Brands’ failure to remove content posted on the

website. Jane Doe herself posted her profile, but she does not

seek to hold Internet Brands liable for its content. Nor does

she allege that Flanders and Callum posted anything to

the website. The Complaint alleges only that “JANE

DOE was contacted by Lavont Flanders through

MODELMAYHEM.COM using a fake identity.” Jane Doe

does not claim to have been lured by any posting that Internet

Brands failed to remove. Internet Brands is also not alleged

to have learned of the predators’ activity from anymonitoring

of postings on the website, nor is its failure to monitor

postings at issue.

Instead, Jane Doe attempts to hold Internet Brands liable

for failing to warn her about information it obtained from an

outside source about how third parties targeted and lured

victims through Model Mayhem. The duty to warn allegedly

imposed by California law would not require Internet Brands

to remove any user content or otherwise affect how it

publishes or monitors such content.

Any alleged obligation to warn could have been satisfied

without changes to the content posted by the website’s users

and without conducting a detailed investigation. Internet

Brands could have given a warning to Model Mayhem users,

perhaps by posting a notice on the website or by informing

users by email what it knew about the activities of Flanders

and Callum. Posting or emailing such a warning could be

deemed an act of publishing information, but section

230(c)(1) bars only liability that treats a website as a

publisher or speaker of content provided by somebody else:

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 11 of 17
12 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

in the words of the statute, “information provided by another

information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1). A post

or email warning that Internet Brands generated would

involve only content that Internet Brands itself produced.

Therefore, an alleged tort based on a duty that would require

such a self-produced warning falls outside of section

230(c)(1).

In sum, Jane Doe’s negligent failure to warn claim does

not seek to hold Internet Brands liable as the “publisher or

speaker of any information provided by another information

content provider.” Id. As a result, we conclude that the CDA

does not bar this claim.

The core policy of section 230(c)(1) supports this

conclusion. As the heading to section 230(c) indicates, the

purpose of that section is to provide “[p]rotection for ‘Good

Samaritan’ blocking and screening of offensive material.”

That means a website should be able to act as a “Good

Samaritan” to self-regulate offensive third party content

without fear of liability. In particular, section 230 was in part

a reaction to Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Servs. Co.,

1995 WL 323710 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 24, 1995)

(unpublished), a New York state court decision holding that

an internet service provider became a “publisher” of offensive

content on its message boards because it deleted some

offensive posts but not others. Id. at *4. Under Stratton

Oakmont’s reasoning, a website had to choose between

voluntarily removing some offensive third party content,

which would expose the site to liability for the content it did

not remove, or filtering nothing, which would prevent

liability for all third party content. See id. “In passing section

230, Congress sought to spare interactive computer services

this grim choice by allowing them to perform some editing on

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 12 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 13

user-generated content without thereby becoming liable for

all defamatory or otherwise unlawful messages that they

didn’t edit or delete.” Fair Housing Council v.

Roommates.Com, LLC, 521 F.3d 1157, 1163 (9th Cir. 2008)

(en banc) (hereafter Roommates.Com). Simply put, the

immunity provision was “enacted to protect websites against

the evil of liability for failure to remove offensive content.”

Id. at 1174.

Jane Doe’s failure to warn claim has nothing to do with

Internet Brands’ efforts, or lack thereof, to edit, monitor, or

remove user generated content. Plaintiff’s theory is that

Internet Brands should be held liable, based on its knowledge

of the rape scheme and its “special relationship” with users

like Jane Doe, for failing to generate its own warning. Thus,

liability would not discourage the core policy of section

230(c), “Good Samaritan” filtering of third party content.

Another policy of section 230 is to “avoid the chilling

effect upon Internet free speech that would be occasioned by

the imposition of tort liability upon companies that do not

create potentially harmful messages but are simply

intermediaries for their delivery.” Delfino v. Agilent Techs.,

Inc., 52 Cal. Rptr. 3d 376, 387 (Ct. App. 2006). As section

230(b) itself explains, “[i]t is the policy of the United States

. . . to promote the continued development of the Internet . . .

[and] to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that

presently exists for the Internet and other interactive

computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”

Jane Doe’s cause of action does not seek to impose

“intermediary” liability. Although Internet Brands may have

been an “intermediary” between Jane Doe and the rapists in

a broad sense, there is no allegation that Model Mayhem

transmitted any potentially harmful messages between Jane

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 13 of 17
14 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

Doe and Flanders or Callum. There is also no allegation that

Flanders or Callum posted their own profiles on the website.

That Internet Brands was in some sense an “intermediary”

between Jane Doe and the rapists simply does not mean that

the failure to warn claim treats Internet Brands as the

publisher or speaker of user content.

It may be true that imposing any tort liability on Internet

Brands for its role as an interactive computer service could be

said to have a “chilling effect” on the internet, if only because

such liability would make operating an internet business

marginally more expensive. But such a broad policy

argument does not persuade us that the CDA should bar the

failure to warn claim. We have already held that the CDA

does not declare “a general immunity from liability deriving

from third-party content.” Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1100. “[T]he

Communications Decency Act was not meant to create a

lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet.” Roommates.Com, 521

F.3d at 1164. Congress has not provided an all purpose getout-of-jail-free card for businesses that publish user content

on the internet, though any claims might have a marginal

chilling effect on internet publishing businesses. Moreover,

the argument that our holding will have a chilling effect

presupposes that Jane Doe has alleged a viable failure to warn

claim under California law. That question is not before us and

remains to be answered.

Barring Jane Doe’s failure to warn claim would stretch

the CDA beyond its narrow language and its purpose. To be

sure, Internet Brands acted as the “publisher or speaker” of

user content by hosting Jane Doe’s user profile on the Model

Mayhem website, and that action could be described as a

“but-for” cause of her injuries. Without it, Flanders and

Callum would not have identified her and been able to lure

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 14 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 15

her to their trap. But that does not mean the failure to warn

claim seeks to hold Internet Brands liable as the “publisher or

speaker” of user content.

Publishing activity is a but-for cause of just about

everything Model Mayhem is involved in. It is an internet

publishing business. Without publishing user content, it

would not exist. As noted above, however, we held in Barnes

that the CDA does not provide a general immunity against all

claims derived from third-party content. In that case we

affirmed the dismissal of a claim for negligent undertaking as

barred under the CDA, as discussed above at 10, but we

reversed the dismissal of a claim for promissory estoppel

under Oregon law. The publication of the offensive profile

posted by the plaintiff’s former boyfriend was a “but-for”

cause there, as well, because without that posting the plaintiff

would not have suffered any injury. But that did not mean

that the CDA immunized the proprietor of the website from

all potential liability. As we observed in Roommates.Com,

“we must be careful not to exceed the scope of the immunity

provided by Congress.” 521 F.3d at 1164 n.15. Congress

could have written the statute more broadly, but it did not.

The parties discuss other court decisions regarding the

CDA in their briefs. The case law provides no close

analogies, though, because the cases are all distinguishable in

critical respects. For example, the purported tort duty does

not arise from allegations about mishandling the removal of

third party content. Barnes, 570 F.3d at 1105–06 (holding that

the CDA bars negligent undertaking claim arising from

Yahoo’s failure to take reasonable care in removing offensive

profiles). Nor is there a contractual duty arising from a

promise distinct from tort duty arising from publishing

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 15 of 17
16 DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC.

conduct. Id. at 1108–09 (holding that the CDA does not bar

a promissory estoppel claim).

The tort duty asserted here does not arise from an alleged

failure to adequately regulate access to user content or to

monitor internal communications that might send up red flags

about sexual predators. Doe II v. MySpace, Inc.,

175 Cal.App.4th 561, 573 (Ct. App. 2009) (holding that the

CDA bars tort claims based on a duty to restrict access to

minors’ MySpace profiles); Doe v. MySpace, Inc., 528 F.3d

413 (5th Cir. 2008) (holding that CDA bars claims for

negligence and gross negligence in not preventing a 13 year

old girl from lying about her age to create a personal profile

that led to contact by a sexual predator). Jane Doe alleges

actual knowledge by Internet Brands from an outside source

of information about criminal activity.

This case does not concern an employer-employee

relationship giving rise to a negligent supervision claim.

Lansing v. Southwest Airlines Co., 980 N.E.2d 630, 639–41

(Ill. Ct. App. 2012) (holding that the CDA does not bar a

negligent supervision claim against an airline whose

employee used the company email and text messaging

systems to harass the plaintiff).

In short, this case presents the novel issue of whether the

CDA bars Jane Doe’s failure to warn claim under California

law. We conclude that it does not.

III. Conclusion

The CDA does not bar Jane Doe’s failure to warn claim.

We express no opinion on the viability of the failure to warn

allegations on the merits. We hold only that the CDA is not

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 16 of 17
DOE V. INTERNET BRANDS, INC. 17

a valid basis to dismiss Jane Doe’s complaint. Accordingly,

we reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this

opinion.

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

 Case: 12-56638, 05/31/2016, ID: 9995368, DktEntry: 58-1, Page 17 of 17