A faith-based filmmaker is suing Facebook, alleging that problems with advertising links provided by the social media site caused three of his movies to fall below expectations in theaters and in DVD sales.
Timothy Chey and his company, Riverrain Productions, are seeking unspecified damages on allegations of negligent interference with prospective economic relations, breach of contract, negligence and defamation.
A Facebook representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit, which was filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
According to the complaint, Chey completed work on the films “Final the Rapture,” “David and Goliath” and “Epic Journey” in 2013. He says he decided to use Facebook’s self-serve ad interface to promote the upcoming releases and spent more than $150,000 for the service.
He expected that links would be provided to the web pages for each of the films that would direct consumers to another page with information about each movie. However, users were instead met with two warnings stating that the links might be malicious or that there were general problems with them, according to the complaint.
“These warnings caused consumers to question the veracity and authenticity of the films and (Chey),” the suit states.
The problems resulted in less demand to see the films in theaters or buy them on DVDs, according to the lawsuit, which says Facebook responded to Chey’s complaints by stating that its technical team was notified of the problems.
Chey has written, produced and directed films for 22 years and has worked with such actors as Cuba Gooding Jr., Tom Sizemore, Stephen Baldwin, Corbin Bernsen, Malcolm McDowell and Pam Grier, according to his court papers.
