Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_18-cv-04144/USCOURTS-cand-4_18-cv-04144-4/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 42:1983 Civil Rights Act

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

JODY DIANE KIMBRELL,

Plaintiff,

v.

TWITTER, INC.,

Defendant.

Case No. 18-cv-04144-PJH 

ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO 

DISMISS

Re: Dkt. No. 40

Before the court is defendant Twitter, Inc.’s (“Twitter”) motion to dismiss pro se

plaintiff Jody Kimbrell’s Third Amended Complaint (the “TAC”). The matter is fully briefed 

and suitable for decision without oral argument. Accordingly, the hearing set for February 

20, 2019, is VACATED. Having read the parties’ papers and carefully considered their 

arguments and the relevant legal authority, and good cause appearing, the court hereby 

GRANTS Twitter’s motion, for the following reasons. 

BACKGROUND

The present motion to dismiss is directed at plaintiff’s fourth complaint. After 

commencing this action on July 11, 2018, plaintiff voluntarily amended her original 

complaint and filed her First Amended Complaint (the “FAC”) on August 14, 2018. Dkt. 9. 

In general, the FAC complained that Twitter’s employees goad Twitter users who support 

President Donald Trump into engaging in purportedly abusive conduct, which Twitter 

subsequently uses as a basis for banning those users. Id., FAC ¶ 8, 25. The FAC 

further alleged that plaintiff was a victim of Twitter’s scheme and that the alleged scheme 

was contrary to Twitter holding itself out to be a “free and open” platform. Id. ¶¶ 6-7, 9. 

The FAC included numerous factual allegations about the events leading up to plaintiff’s

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permanent suspension from Twitter’s platform. See generally FAC. 

On October 9, 2018, Twitter moved to dismiss the FAC. Less than one week later, 

plaintiff moved pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 to amend her complaint 

and to file a proposed Second Amended Complaint (the “SAC”). 

On November 16, 2018, after the parties completed briefing on those two motions, 

the court granted Twitter’s motion to dismiss and denied plaintiff’s Rule 15 motion. Dkt. 

37 (the “MTD Order”). The court denied the latter motion because, inter alia, the 

proposed SAC alleged no causes of action or improperly attempted to incorporate the 

prior complaint. Id. at 3-4. With regard to the former motion, the court granted Twitter’s 

motion with prejudice in part and without prejudice in part. Id. at 8. Specifically, the court 

granted plaintiff leave to amend her claims based on (i) California’s Unfair Competition 

Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200 et seq., (the “UCL”); (ii) the Illinois Consumer Fraud 

and Deceptive Practices Act, 815 ILCS 505/1 (the “ICFA”); (iii) the Illinois Uniform 

Deceptive Trade Practices Act, 815 ILCS 510/1 (the “UDTPA”); and (iv) the federal 

Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2520. Id. at 8. The order dismissed plaintiff’s other claims with 

prejudice and prohibited plaintiff from adding any claims without leave of court. Id. 

On December 14, 2018, plaintiff timely filed her TAC. Dkt. 38. Like the FAC, the 

TAC generally alleges that Twitter advertises that its platform is “free and open,” but in 

actual fact Twitter tracks and bans users who express views “that are abhorrent to” 

Twitter’s employees or that Twitter’s employees disagree with. Id., TAC at 7. However, 

unlike the FAC, the TAC is devoid of factual allegations about the circumstances 

surrounding plaintiff’s permanent suspension from the platform. See generally id. The 

TAC instead opts to include conclusory statements about the law and recount allegations 

from the FAC about Twitter’s purported motive to induce users to join the platform before 

subsequently banning those same users. Id. In fact, the only new allegation in the TAC 

is that Twitter “engages in electronic eavesdropping of @realDonaldTrump without his

permission” in order “to identify, monitor[,] and ban his supporters[.]” Id. at 9. Lastly, like 

the FAC, the TAC incudes only conclusory statements about plaintiff being harmed 

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without any supporting factual allegations about the alleged injury.1

Based on the above allegations, the TAC states three “counts” based on five 

statutes: (i) the UCL; (ii) the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, Cal. Civ. Code § 1750 et 

seq. (the “CLRA”); (iii) the ICFA; (iv) the UDTPA; and (v) the federal Wiretap Act. 

DISCUSSION

A. The TAC Must Be Dismissed Because It Fails To Allege Any Facts About 

Plaintiff’s Suspension and/or Improperly Attempts to Incorporate The FAC.

The TAC does not contain any factual allegations about plaintiff’s suspension from 

the Twitter platform—allegations that were included in the FAC. That leaves plaintiff with 

two unenviable options. First, plaintiff could rest exclusively on the TAC’s allegations. 

Doing so, however, would doom the TAC because without factual allegations about her 

own alleged injury, plaintiff cannot state a claim or satisfactorily allege standing. Second, 

the TAC could be construed as attempting to incorporate the FAC’s allegations. But, as 

the court previously warned, amended complaints may not incorporate the allegations 

within prior complaints. MTD Order at 4 (citing Civ. L.R. 10-1 (“Any party filing or moving 

to file an amended pleading must reproduce the entire proposed pleading and may not 

incorporate any part of a prior pleading by reference.”); Lacey v. Maricopa Cty., 693 F.3d 

896, 927–28 (9th Cir. 2012) (“an amended complaint supersedes the original complaint 

and renders it without legal effect”)). Thus, that too would not save the TAC. 

The foregoing reasons alone provide a basis for dismissing plaintiff’s TAC. 

B. The Allegations Within Plaintiff’s TAC and FAC Do Not State A Claim.

In the alternative, the court finds that the TAC must be dismissed even if the court 

considers the TAC’s allegations in conjunction with FAC’s allegations.

2

 Though the court 

 

1 The TAC also attaches a copy of an online article published on “The Duran,” titled 

“Leaked 49-page memo documents how George Soros is behind social media 

censorship,” dated August 24, 2018. That article has little to do with Twitter specifically, 

nothing to do with plaintiff’s own suspension, and generally lends no credibility to 

plaintiff’s claims. TAC, Ex. A. 

2 Because the court discussed the FAC’s allegations at length in the MTD Order, it does 

not recite those allegations again here.

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considers each statutory basis for plaintiff’s claims below, in short, the two complaints 

considered together fail to state a claim because the FAC by itself failed to state a claim, 

see MTD Order, and the TAC does not add any new allegations. 

1. Legal Standard

A motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) tests for the legal sufficiency of the claims 

alleged in the complaint. Ileto v. Glock, 349 F.3d 1191, 1199-1200 (9th Cir. 2003). 

Under the minimal notice pleading requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8, 

which requires that a complaint include a “short and plain statement of the claim showing 

that the pleader is entitled to relief,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2), a complaint may be 

dismissed under Rule 12(b)(6) if the plaintiff fails to state a cognizable legal theory, or 

has not alleged sufficient facts to support a cognizable legal theory. Somers v. Apple, 

Inc., 729 F.3d 953, 959 (9th Cir. 2013).

While the court must accept as true all the factual allegations in the complaint, 

legally conclusory statements, not supported by actual factual allegations, need not be 

accepted. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678-79 (2009). The complaint must proffer 

sufficient facts to state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. 

Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 558-59 (2007). 

“A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows 

the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct 

alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678 (citation omitted). “[W]here the well-pleaded facts do not 

permit the court to infer more than the mere possibility of misconduct, the complaint has 

alleged—but it has not ‘show[n]’—‘that the pleader is entitled to relief.’ ” Id. at 679. 

Where dismissal is warranted, it is generally without prejudice, unless it is clear the 

complaint cannot be saved by any amendment. Sparling v. Daou, 411 F.3d 1006, 1013 

(9th Cir. 2005).

In addition, when, as here, the allegations involve fraud, heightened pleading 

standards apply. “[T]he circumstances constituting fraud or mistake shall be stated with 

particularity.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b). Under Rule 9(b), falsity must be pled with specificity, 

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including an account of the “time, place, and specific content of the false representations 

as well as the identities of the parties to the misrepresentations.” Swartz v. KPMG LLP, 

476 F.3d 756, 764 (9th Cir. 2007) (citations omitted).

2. Plaintiff Has Not Stated A Claim Based on The UCL, The ICFA, The 

UDTPA, or The CLRA.

In considering plaintiff’s FAC, the court explained that the FAC failed to sufficiently 

allege that Twitter engaged in an “unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice,” 

as required to state a claim under the UCL. MTD Order at 7. The court also found that 

the FAC’s allegations failed to satisfy “Rule 9(b)’s requirement that the plaintiff allege the 

who, what, when, where, and how’ of the fraud,” MTD Order at 7, and that Twitter’s 

challenged representation was “not likely to deceive a reasonable consumer into 

believing that Twitter did not retain the right to suspend [its] users[.]” Id. Lastly, the court 

held that plaintiff lacked standing to state a UCL claim because she failed to allege that 

she suffered an economic injury as a result of the challenged practice. Id. at 8. The 

court also explained that plaintiff’s ICFA and UDTPA claims failed for the same reasons 

as plaintiff’s UCL claim. Id.

The TAC and plaintiff’s opposition to the present motion fail to change the court’s 

analysis of those three claims. The TAC does not help plaintiff state a claim because it 

includes no new substantive allegations. And plaintiff’s only new legal argument—that 

Twitter violated the ICFA by failing to “substantiate” its representations about providing a 

“free and open” platform—is misguided. Under the ICFA, “a plaintiff can show that an 

advertisement is deceptive either by proving its falsity or by showing that its proponent 

lacked a reasonable basis for asserting its truth.” Spector v. Mondelez Int'l, Inc., 178 F. 

Supp. 3d 657, 666 (N.D. Ill. 2016) (collecting cases). The latter method is commonly 

termed “a lack of substantiation claim.” Id. “Under Illinois law, lack of substantiation is 

deceptive only when the claim at issue implies there is substantiation for that claim, i.e., if 

defendants had claimed something along the lines of ‘tests show that [the product in 

question] is [ ] effective . . . .” Id. (ellipses in original). The TAC does not contain any 

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allegations suggesting that Twitter implied that the challenged representation—a “free 

and open” platform—was “substantiated” or supported by anything. Accordingly, framing 

the ICFA claim as a “substantiation” claim does not save it.

Plaintiff’s new claim based on the CLRA fails for two independent reasons. First, 

plaintiff did not obtain leave of court to add her CLRA claim, as required by this court’s 

prior order. MTD Order at 8. Plaintiff did not seek leave to add her CLRA claim. 

Second, because plaintiff’s CLRA and UCL claims challenge the same conduct, plaintiff’s 

CLRA claim fails for the same reasons as her UCL claim fails. Gregorio v. Clorox Co., 

No. 17-CV-03824-PJH, 2018 WL 732673, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Feb. 6, 2018) (“The Ninth 

Circuit has explained that” the CLRA, like the UCL, is “governed by the ‘reasonable 

consumer’ test.”); Reid v. Johnson & Johnson, 780 F.3d 952, 958 (9th Cir. 2015) (“To 

establish standing to bring a claim under” the UCL or the CLRA, “plaintiffs must meet an 

economic injury-in-fact requirement[.]”).3

3. Plaintiff Has Not Stated A Claim Based on the Federal Wiretap Act

Section 2520 of the federal Wiretap Act creates civil liability when the plaintiff’s 

“wire, oral, or electronic communication is intercepted, disclosed, or intentionally used in 

violation of” the Wiretap Act. Plaintiff argues that Twitter violated § 2511 of the Wiretap 

Act by “intercepting a communication or procuring another to intercept a communication.” 

TAC at 9. Specifically, the TAC alleges that Twitter “engages in electronic eavesdropping 

of @realDonaldTrump without his permission to identify, monitor and ban his supporters 

in violation of [the] law,” that plaintiff did not consent to that surveillance, and that 

Twitter’s employees “participated in illegal surveillance” of @realDonaldTrump supporters 

in order to remove them from the Twitter platform. TAC at 9-10. 

Plaintiff’s Wiretap Act-based claim fails for at least two reasons. First, like the 

 

3 Though it is not alleged in the TAC, plaintiff’s opposition references a “negligent 

misrepresentation” claim. That claim fails because plaintiff did not seek leave of court to 

add the claim and because plaintiff has failed to allege justifiable reliance or resulting 

damage. Apollo Capital Fund, LLC v. Roth Capital Partners, LLC, 158 Cal. App. 4th 226, 

243 (2007) (listing elements of negligent misrepresentation claim). 

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FAC, the TAC is devoid of allegations that Twitter “intercepted, disclosed, or intentionally 

used” plaintiff’s communications. Not to mention that plaintiff fails to allege that Twitter 

intercepted a communication during its transmission. Theofel v. Farey-Jones, 359 F.3d 

1066, 1077 (9th Cir. 2004) (“[T]he Act applies only to acquisition contemporaneous with 

transmission.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Second, the TAC appears to allege 

that Twitter intercepted, eavesdropped on, or surveilled “@realDonaldTrump’s” public 

tweets in order to ban its followers. The Wiretap Act, however, specifically excludes such 

public communications from its purview. 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(g)(i) (“it shall not be 

unlawful . . . for any person . . . to intercept or access an electronic communication made 

through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic 

communication is readily accessible to the general public.”).4

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the court GRANTS defendant’s motion to dismiss. 

Because the court finds that further amendment would be futile, and because plaintiff has 

already been provided an opportunity to amend, the complaint is DISMISSED WITH 

PREJUDICE.5 The Clerk shall close the file. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: February 14, 2019

__________________________________

PHYLLIS J. HAMILTON

United States District Judge

 

4

In addition, plaintiff is prohibited from bringing claims on behalf of third parties because 

she is proceeding pro se, see McShane v. United States, 366 F.2d 286, 288 (9th Cir. 

1966), and because she “must assert h[er] own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest 

h[er] claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 

U.S. 490, 499 (1975). 

5 The parties’ requests for judicial notice are DENIED as moot. 

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