Legal experts cited by Reuters identified how a New Mexico jury counted consumer-law violations as a possible challenge to Meta’s $25 billion penalty, imposed Wednesday by a state judge.
Judge Francis J. Mathew ordered Meta to pay after a Sept. 25 jury verdict found 43,899,725 violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act. The judgment classifies 43,899,720 as willful unfair or deceptive practices and five as unconscionable practices. It lists a $219.4986 billion penalty before reducing it to $25 billion and adds 15% annual interest until paid.
Under the final jury instructions, jurors could base a violation count on a representation’s expected reach among New Mexicans. The state did not have to identify a recipient who actually encountered it or show that the person relied on it or was harmed.
Reuters reported that Villanova University law professor Peter Ormerod viewed the lack of proof that a specific person saw or relied on a statement as a possible appellate weakness. Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman questioned whether some counts overlapped. Penn State Dickinson Law professor Daryl Lim said the penalty’s size alone did not show it would be overturned.
New Mexico’s law allows penalties of up to $5,000 per willful violation. Mathew cited the conduct’s scale, duration and repetition, senior executives’ involvement and the size of the audiences reached when setting the amount before reducing it.
The New Mexico penalty is separate from the Federal Trade Commission’s $5 billion penalty against Facebook in 2019 over alleged violations of a 2012 privacy order. The Associated Press reported that Meta Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney said the company was confident it would prevail on appeal.
Mathew reserved the state’s request for injunctive relief for further briefing but set no date for that process.
