N.Y. Judge Grants Plaintiffs' Remand Motion in TikTok, MTA Negligence Suit

April 29, 2024 |Litigation Notebook

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for Eastern New York in Brooklyn granted plaintiffs Dean and Michelle Nasca’s motion to remand their product liability and negligence lawsuit against TikTok, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, MTA Long Island Railroad and the Town of Islip, Long Island, to Suffolk County Supreme Court for lack of jurisdiction, his Friday order said (docket 24-cv-2061). The Nascas sued TikTok in U.S. District Court for Northern California in March 2023 after their 16-year-old son, Chase, committed suicide on Feb. 18, 2022, after the platform allegedly directed him to adult accounts with "thousands" of “highly depressive, violent, self-harm and suicide themed content." Chase walked through an unfenced portion of Long Island Railroad train tracks, texted a friend “I’m gonna go” and was crushed by a Metropolitan Transit Authority commuter train, the lawsuit alleges. TikTok previously removed the action to federal court, and the Brooklyn court remanded to state court for lack of jurisdiction, said the order. At the time of removal, TikTok removed the cases “inclusive of the MTA Defendants -- there was no other case to remove,” and the removed case “therefore included non-diverse, forum state defendants,” the order said. On Thursday, the Nascas filed a memorandum in support of their motion to vacate conditional transfer order 30 (CTO-30) before the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation currently pending before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for Northern California in Oakland (docket 3047). TikTok included the Nascas' case in a notice of potential tagalong actions to MDL 3047, and the JPML conditionally transferred it to the MDL in CTO-30. Alternatively, the Nascas requested that the panel abstain from rendering a decision on the motion to vacate until the Eastern District of New York issued an order on the plaintiffs' pending motion to remand.