EAST ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge David Dugan recused himself in the tenth month of an Edwardsville company’s unfair competition suit against Facebook owner Meta Platforms.
He stepped away on April 24, six days after a hearing on a motion to compel arbitration.
Minutes of the event show he took the motion under advisement and would issue an order.
Metroplex Communications sued Meta last July as a competitor for advertising.
Metroplex owns 94.3 FM, 107.1 FM, 1570 AM, and a Best of Edwardsville website.
Its counsel Kevin Green of Goldenberg Heller in Edwardsville claimed Facebook understated the number of duplicate and false accounts.
Green claimed Facebook overstated the number of active users and the reach of its advertising campaigns.
He added that it double counted persons who used Facebook and Meta’s Instagram if they didn’t link the accounts.
He also claimed Facebook admitted it has disabled billions of fake accounts.
He proposed to certify a class action under national and state laws on unfair competition.
Meta counsel Andrew Clubok of Washington moved to compel arbitration in September.
Clubok claimed Metroplex managed Facebook pages to promote its properties and had done so dozens of times in three years.
He claimed Metroplex accepted Facebook’s terms of service, including mandatory arbitration.
He also claimed it waived jury trial and class action.
“Courts readily enforce the sort of online agreements that plaintiff was required to accept in order to purchase Meta ads,” he wrote.
Green responded in November that, “Metroplex’s claims exist regardless of whether Metroplex ever had a Facebook page or did business with Facebook.”
“Meta does not permit a business to create an account,” he wrote.
Green claimed only a real person with an account may create a page for a business.
“If a business attempts to create a Facebook account, Meta deems it a false account that should be removed,” he wrote.
He wrote that the arbitration agreement binds humans, not businesses, “even businesses for which users create pages.”
Clubok replied in December that Metroplex advanced radical theories with implications far beyond this case.
“Companies can only act through their human agents, and those agents bind corporations to contracts including arbitration clauses,” he wrote.
In January, Dugan set argument over the matter for April 18.
He heard the argument, but he didn’t resolve it.
After Dugan recused himself, the court clerk randomly assigned District Judge Staci Yandle.