Opinion ID: 4556814
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Fraud Claims and Other Theories of Liability

Text: Test Prep claimed that Allnurses committed common law misrepresentation and violated the New Jersey and Minnesota Consumer Fraud Acts. See N.J. Stat. § 56:8- 2; Minn. Stat. § 325F.69. The complaint alleged that Allnurses held itself out to be a fair and impartial forum that “promote[d] the idea of lively debate,” but failed to disclose its relationship with Excelsior College and other advertisers. Test Prep claimed that Allnurses used the forum to advance the interests of those advertisers, as shown by Dukes’s like of monkeyhq’s post and by Allnurses’s actions in closing the thread, removing certain posts by a Test Prep employee, and disabling that employee’s account. We agree with the district court that these bare factual allegations do not state common law or statutory claims for fraud that are plausible on their face. Test Prep contends that the district court erred in converting Allnurses’s motion for judgment on the pleadings to a motion for summary judgment with respect to the fraud claims. Having decided that the district court properly granted judgment on the pleadings on those claims, we need not decide whether its alternative disposition of the fraud claims was appropriate. Moreover, we agree with the district court that Test -11- Prep’s remaining claims—for vicarious, contributory, inducement, or acting-inconcert liability—must be dismissed because they are “not independently actionable.”