FILE- In this March 29, 2018, file photo, the logo for Facebook appears on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York’s Times Square. Newly released court documents reveal that Facebook allowed children playing digital games on its social network to ring up huge bills on their parents’ credit cards while rejecting recommendations on how it could address a problem that the company dubbed “friendly fraud.” The internal Facebook memos and other records were unsealed late Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019, to comply with a judge’s order issued in a federal court case settled in 2016. The lawsuit centered on allegations that Facebook knowingly gouged teenage children by permitting them to spend hundreds of dollars buying additional features on games such as “Angry Birds” and “Barn Buddy.” (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
CINCINNATI (AP) — A federal appeals court has kept alive a man’s lawsuit against a suburban Cleveland city and police over a fake Facebook page that led to his arrest.
A three-judge 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed Monday with U.S. District Judge Dan Polster’s ruling that the lawsuit can proceed.
Anthony Novak sued the city of Parma and police officers seeking compensation and legal fees after his acquittal of a felony count of disrupting public services. He had created a Facebook page in 2016 that resembled the Parma police department’s page.
Judge Amul (AH’-mool) Thapar (thuh-PAHR’) wrote that the case is about whether Novak’s page was “a protected parody in the great American tradition of ridiculing the government.”
The court dismissed some claims, and didn’t rule on municipal liability.
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