Former US Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
NORTH DAKOTA (KFGO) – On KFGO, former North Dakota Senator and Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp responded to Attorney General Drew Wrigley withdrawing from the multi-state Meta lawsuit leading saying she “wouldn’t have walked away from tens of millions of dollars.”
North Dakota received $17.6 million in a settlement announced last month. South Dakota stayed in the suit and got $53 million.
Heitkamp pointed out New Mexico won a $375 million lawsuit against Meta in March accusing the company of misleading Facebook and Instagram users and endangering children.
“There had been a trend line that should have told them that this is about an 80% thing that they’re going to settle and we’re going to do everything we can to maximize our recovery,” Heitkamp explained.
Wrigley explained on “News and Views” he withdrew from the lawsuit because of what he calls burdensome requests from a federal judge including with finding potential victims.
“A discovery order that was issued by a magistrate judge in California that basically ordered the state AG to be responsible for these massive state government wide discovery requests.” Wrigley said. “We withdrew as a result of our state agencies, who believe that this burdensome request, they had no way to meet this in a meaningful way, cost effective way, time effective way, and we concluded that, you know, we’ve got a small but mighty consumer protection division.”
“This idea that we didn’t want to do the work… I would have figured out a way to talk to those [state] agencies and say ‘Let’s just get this done. This means real money for North Dakota youth,'” Heitkamp said.
Wrigley said the differences in the distribution of funds was unexpected, adding the suit achieved its goal of protecting young users from unfair practices and features.
“We have no, there are no named victims. We don’t have people that we can look at. These aren’t damages that are being assessed because we have a category of people that have been injured by it, but, we get [$17.6 million] nevertheless for having been part of the lawsuit,” Wrigley said.
Heitkamp pointed out it wasn’t guaranteed she would win the 46-state lawsuit she lead as North Dakota Attorney General in 1998 against tobacco companies to recover smoking-related healthcare costs.
The state received nearly $775 million in a settlement.
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