David Angel Sifuentes v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedApril 28, 2026
Docket4:25-cv-04479
StatusUnknown

This text of David Angel Sifuentes v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (David Angel Sifuentes v. Meta Platforms, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
David Angel Sifuentes v. Meta Platforms, Inc., (N.D. Cal. 2026).

Opinion

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 DAVID ANGEL SIFUENTES, Case No. 25-cv-04479-JST

8 Plaintiff, ORDER DISMISSING THE SAC v. 9 Re: ECF Nos. 23, 28 10 META PLATFORMS, INC., Defendant. 11

12 13 Before the Court is Defendant Meta’s motion to dismiss Plaintiff David Angel Sifuentes’s 14 Second Amended Complaint (“SAC”). ECF No. 23. The Court will grant the motion and dismiss 15 the SAC without leave to amend. 16 I. BACKGROUND 17 On May 27, 2025, Sifuentes filed this action against Meta, alleging that it had failed to 18 notify him that his personal information and that of his Facebook friends had been compromised 19 in a “massive data breach” that occurred in 2021. ECF No. 1 ¶ 1. He subsequently filed a First 20 Amended Complaint (“FAC”) on June 10, 2025. ECF No. 5. Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse 21 granted Sifuentes’s application to proceed in forma pauperis but screened and dismissed the FAC 22 under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2). ECF Nos. 10, 11. Sifuentes filed this SAC on July 21, 2025, which 23 Judge Tse screened without dismissing on July 23, 2025. ECF No. 14. 24 The SAC alleges thirteen causes of action: (1) violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act; 25 (2) negligence (under Michigan law); (3) invasion of privacy (under California Law); (4) breach of 26 express contract (under California law); (5) breach of implied contract (under California law); (6) 27 violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law; (7) violation of California’s Consumer Legal 1 of Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act; (10) bailment (under California law); (11) violation of 2 Michigan’s Identity Theft Protection Act; (12) fraud (under California law); and (13) trespass to 3 chattels (under California law). 4 Meta filed a motion to dismiss on September 26, 2025. ECF No. 23. Sifuentes opposed on 5 October 6. ECF No. 25. Meta replied on October 17. ECF No. 26. Sifuentes moved for leave to 6 file a sur-reply on October 28. ECF No. 28. Meta opposed the motion for leave on December 1. 7 ECF No. 38. 8 Sifuentes also attached to his opposition to the motion to dismiss a “cross-motion for 9 summary judgment and opposition to defendant’s motion to dismiss.” ECF No. 25 at 7. He later 10 filed a “notice of motion and motion for summary judgment” separately, including only an outline 11 of the arguments he expected to make. ECF No. 35. Meta opposed the summary judgment 12 motion on December 8, 2025. ECF No. 39. Sifuentes then filed an amended motion for summary 13 judgment. ECF No. 40. The Court denied Sifuentes’s summary judgment motions by separate 14 order. ECF No. 41. 15 Sifuentes is an acknowledged serial litigant who has been placed on restricted filing status 16 in both the Eastern and Western Districts of Michigan. Sifuentes v. Twitter Inc., No. 1:23-CV- 17 981, 2023 WL 8818095, at *4 (W.D. Mich. Nov. 30, 2023), appeal dismissed, No. 23-2066, 2024 18 WL 2887907 (6th Cir. May 31, 2024), and motion for relief from judgment denied, No. 1:23-CV- 19 981, 2025 WL 294259 (W.D. Mich. Jan. 21, 2025), appeal dismissed sub nom. Sifuentes v. 20 Midland Cnty., MI 42nd Cir. Ct., No. 24-2063, 2025 WL 3502509 (6th Cir. Nov. 5, 2025). 21 II. JURISDICTION 22 The Court has jurisdiction under §§ 1331, 1332, and 1367. 23 III. LEGAL STANDARD 24 To survive a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a 25 complaint must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is 26 entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). “[A] complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, 27 accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.’” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 1 allegations need not be detailed, but facts must be “enough to raise a right to relief above the 2 speculative level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555. 3 In determining whether a plaintiff has met the plausibility requirement, a court must 4 “accept all factual allegations in the complaint as true and construe the pleadings in the light most 5 favorable” to the plaintiff. Knievel v. ESPN, 393 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th Cir. 2005). However, mere 6 legal conclusions and “[t]hreadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action” are “not entitled 7 to the assumption of truth.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678–79. 8 As here, a “document filed pro se is to be liberally construed and a pro se complaint, 9 however inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted 10 by lawyers.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007) (internal quotations and citation 11 omitted). 12 IV. DISCUSSION 13 A. Plausibility 14 Each of Sifuentes’s claims stems from his allegation that his personal information was 15 “compromised” by a breach of data maintained by Facebook. ECF No. 12 ¶ 10. The basis for 16 Sifuentes’s allegation is two attached documents: (1) a screenshot of a notification from Apple, 17 received by Sifuentes on May 20, 2025, indicating that the email and password he used for his 18 Facebook account had been involved in a data breach, and (2) a news article describing a 19 cyberattack in April of 2021 wherein cybercriminals accessed personal information belonging to 20 “more than half a million Facebook users.” ECF No. 5 at 24, 27; ECF No. 12 ¶ 13.1 The article 21 states that cybercriminals aquired Facebook identities, full names, birth dates, locations, and email 22 addresses. ECF No. 5 at 27. 23 Sifuentes has failed to allege facts rendering his theory plausible. The 2025 Apple 24 notification merely states that the password used for his Facebook account appeared in a breach— 25 26 1 Although these documents are attached to the FAC, but not the SAC, the Court considers them as 27 incorporated by reference into the SAC. See ECF No. 5 at 24–33; Williams v. Cnty. of Alameda, 1 not that the breach was one targeting Facebook. ECF No. 5 at 24. Moreover, the news article 2 Sifuentes attached does not state that passwords were included in the 2021 breach. Compare ECF 3 No. 5 at 24 with id. at 27. Rather, the article states that the 2021 breach involved “scrap[ing]” 4 users’ profiles—but passwords are not published on users’ profiles. Id. at 27–28. Moreover, as 5 Sifuentes readily admits, he used the same password for “multiple” other accounts. ECF No. 12 6 ¶ 16; ECF No. 5 at 24. The fact that Sifuentes received the notification in 2025 further 7 undermines his claim that it related back to the 2021 Facebook breach. ECF No. 5 at 24. 8 Sifuentes’s attached article states that individuals can confirm that they were impacted by 9 the 2021 breach using a website. ECF No. 5 at 27. Sifuentes does not allege that he used this 10 website to confirm that he was impacted. And he alleges no other means by which he attempted to 11 discover whether his information was included in the 2021 breach and no facts suggesting that it 12 was. 13 Sifuentes alleges that because of the breach, his “Facebook account was hijacked, his 14 personal information and that of his contacts were exposed, [and] unauthorized communications 15 were sent from his account.” ECF No. 12 ¶ 2. He does not explain how or to whom “his personal 16 information and that of his contacts were exposed.” He likewise does not provide any detail about 17 the “unauthorized communications” and “Facebook friend requests” sent from his account, even 18 though those details are presumably readily accessible to him. Id. ¶¶ 2, 15.

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