Roblox Injury Lawyers Seek Leadership Roles in Child Exploitation MDL

Lawyers will meet this week with the MDL judge assigned to preside over the growing number of Roblox child exploitation lawsuits, to discuss the structure and schedule for the cases.

With families throughout the U.S. pursuing lawsuits against Roblox, each raising similar allegations that their children were exploited, harassed or assaulted by adult users on the platform, the U.S. District Judge recently appointed to preside over the litigation will hold an initial case management conference tomorrow, which will likely result in the appointment of specific Roblox injury lawyers to serve in various leadership positions throughout the pretrial proceedings.

Roblox is a popular video game construction set aggressively marketed toward children that was first launched in 2006. The platform 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.

Although a large portion of the players are children, only 42% of Roblox users are under the age of 13, meaning tens of millions of adults also participate. With a lack of safeguards on the platform, there have been hundreds of reports involving children being exploited on Roblox, with adults often pretending to be children, chatting with, and sometimes grooming, minor players.

Many times 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.

Roblox Sexual Exploitation Lawsuits

As a result, hundreds of Roblox sexual exploitation lawsuits have been filed across the United States in recent months, each raising similar allegations that the platform was intentionally designed to maximize user growth and engagement while failing to implement adequate safeguards to protect children from sexual exploitation.

Facing increasing pressure from lawsuits and mounting public opinion, developers recently 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.

Roblox MDL Lawyers

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

Just days later, Judge Seeborg issued a pretrial order (PDF) calling for submissions of applications for Roblox injury lawyer leadership positions and setting an initial status conference for January 30. The submissions were due by January 12.

The Roblox injury lawyers selected to serve in various leadership positions in the litigation will conduct pretrial discovery on behalf of all plaintiffs in all actions consolidated in the multidistrict litigation (MDL), 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 MDL.

In addition to the appointment of lead counsel for plaintiffs, Friday’s initial status conference will also involve discussions on the lead counsel’s responsibilities, the status of all litigation currently pending in the newly-formed MDL, schedules for discovery, and other key steps vital to the smooth start of the litigation.

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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