2022 Buffalo Mass Shooting Lawsuit Goes to Court
Matthew P. Bergman, the nation’s leading attorney against harm caused by social media companies, and Buffalo attorney Kristen Elmore-Garcia argued last week why a local court case — the first of its kind to hold social media companies and firearms manufacturers accountable for mass shootings in America — should be permitted to proceed. The suit was filed in response to the racist mass shooting at a Tops supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black East Side in May 2022. Ten people, all of them Black, were killed, and three others were injured.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Paula Feroleto will hear oral arguments on the case, Patterson, Diona et al vs. Meta Platforms, Inc., et al., on Nov. 16 and 17 in Erie County Supreme Court, Part 14. Gun magazine lock manufacturer Mean LLC, and social media companies Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, and 4chan, have filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit.
The Social Media Victims Law Center (Seattle, Wash.); John V. Elmore, P.C. (Buffalo, N.Y.); the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (San Francisco, Calif.); and Belluck & Fox L.L.P. (New York, N.Y.) filed the Buffalo lawsuit on May 12, 2023. It was the first of a series of lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the mass shooting that aim to hold accountable the social media companies that radicalized the gunman, as well as the gun store, body armor manufacturer, and magazine lock manufacturer that armed him. Arguments in this case will likely impact the outcome of similar lawsuits filed in October by 33 state attorneys general that accuse Meta, parent company to Facebook and Instagram, of having “engaged in … deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state and federal law.”
Bergman and Madeline Basha of the Social Media Victims Law Center will argue, in part, that the Buffalo mass shooting was “the foreseeable consequence of ... social media companies’ conscious decision to (create and utilize) platforms and tools that maximize user engagement … at the expense of public safety,” and that the gunman “was motivated to commit his heinous crime by racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist propaganda recommended and fed to him by the social media companies whose products he used.”
Elmore-Garcia, of John V. Elmore, P.C., will argue that Mean LLC, which manufactured the magazine accessory installed on the Tops gunman’s AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle when he purchased it, engaged in deceptive and false marketing practices by advertising its product as being compliant with New York State gun laws. However, instructions on how to easily remove the magazine lock were printed on the accessory’s packaging. While New York State Attorney General Letitia James has filed a similar case against Mean LLC, Elmore-Garcia will be the first to argue such a case against the company.
A court decision on the case will be forthcoming in the new year.