Lawyers in Roblox MDL Over Child Sex Exploitation Assigned Leadership Positions

Three attorneys have been appointed to co-lead counsel positions in the Roblox MDL, with more appointments expected later this month.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all Roblox child exploitation lawsuits has appointed a group of attorneys to serve in leadership positions in the federal MDL (multidistrict litigation), tasked with taking certain steps during pretrial proceedings that will benefit all families pursuing claims against the gaming platform for failing to protect children from rampant sexual predator activity.

Roblox was first launched in 2006, and has been marketed to parents as a safe platform for children, involving video game construction sets and community features. It allows users to build their own games, create customized avatars, explore player-created games and worlds, and make in-game purchases. An estimated 111 million users play every day, with 40 million concurrent players often online at the same time.

However, Roblox Corporation now faces more than 100 lawsuits filed by parents and young adults, each raising similar allegations that minors were groomed or engaged in the exchange of explicit photos with adults using the platform, sometimes including incidents of rape or kidnappings by sexual predators, often pretending to be children. The lawsuits claim Roblox failed to provide adequate protections from sexual assault for the children it invited to use the platform in order to maximize profits.

Often, these sexual predators will divert their victims to other platforms like Discord and Snapchat, where they can trade sexually explicit materials, convince children to take illicit photos and videos, and sometimes arrange meetings where minors are sexually assaulted, kidnapped and even sex trafficked.

Last year, facing increasing pressure from lawsuits and mounting public opinion, developers rolled out a new Roblox age check verification system that relies heavily on facial scans to identify which users are adults and which are not. The company says that future updates will also require minors to have parental consent to chat, limiting communications between them and adults.

In December, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) issued an order consolidating all Roblox lawsuits into an MDL under U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in the Northern District of California for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

Shortly after the creation of the federal MDL, Judge Seeborg called for Roblox injury lawyers to apply for leadership positions in the litigation.

In an order (PDF) issued on January 30, the Judge announced the appointment of three attorneys to serve as plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel. The attorneys have been ordered to submit a proposed order that will appoint one liaison counsel by February 13.

These Roblox MDL lawyers will conduct pretrial discovery on behalf of all plaintiffs in consolidated actions, examine witnesses and introduce evidence on behalf of plaintiffs at hearings, act as spokesperson for all plaintiffs in the pretrial proceedings and perform other actions that may apply to all cases in the Roblox MDL.

It is expected that Judge Seeborg will eventually call for the parties to prepare several claims for early “bellwether” trial dates, in which representative cases will be put before juries to see how they respond to evidence and testimony likely to be repeated throughout.

The outcome of these trials could help the parties reach a Roblox injury lawsuit settlement agreement. However, if the pretrial proceedings are completed without a settlement or other resolution, Judge Seeborg is likely to remand the cases back to their originating districts for individual trial dates.

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