Court Rejects Lawsuit Over Online Criticisms of a Dater–D’Ambrosio v. Meta

Abbigail Rajala posted a critical review of her dating experience with Nikko D’Ambrosio on the Chicago subboard of Facebook’s Spill the Tea group. According to the district court, D’Ambrosio “sued anyone remotely associated with those posts for all possible, imaginable claims, including the woman who dated him and her parents, women commenting on posts, the operators of the Facebook group, and Facebook itself.” The district court dismissed his case. The Seventh Circuit affirms, says parts of the appeal may be sanctionably “frivolous,” and calls out the plaintiff lawyers’ misuse of Generative AI. Illinois Right of Publicity Act “D’Ambrosio’s IRPA claims fail because he has not sufficiently alleged that any defendant used his likeness for a commercial purpose.” With respect to Facebook: A free-floating profit motive is not enough…Meta did not have a commercial purpose in terms of the IRPA merely because it displayed advertisements for products or services unrelated to the posts on the…