(Article from Insurance Law Alert, March 2026)
For more information, please visit the Insurance Law Alert Resource Center.
Holding
The Delaware Superior Court, applying California law, held that Meta’s insurers have no duty to defend Meta in thousands of lawsuits alleging that users of its social media platforms were harmed because the alleged conduct—Meta’s intentional design and operation of its platforms—does not constitute an accident under the policies. Hartford Cas. Ins. Co. v. Instagram, LLC as. Successor in Int. to Instagram, No. N24C-11-010-SKR CCLD, 2026 LX 93986 (Del. Super. Ct. Feb. 27, 2026).
Background
Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits consolidated in California alleging that Meta’s social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, caused children to become addicted and suffer various mental and physical harms (the “Social Media Litigation”). Meta’s insurers filed a declaratory judgment action against Meta in Delaware Superior Court, seeking a determination that they have no duty to defend Meta in the Social Media Litigation. Meta subsequently filed competing coverage actions in California federal and state court. The parties agreed that California substantive law governs the coverage dispute.
Decision
The court first addressed Meta’s motion to stay the Delaware action under California’s “Montrose Stay” doctrine, which requires a stay of coverage litigation when the underlying coverage dispute “turns on facts to be litigated in the underlying action.” A stay is required where there is factual “overlap” between the coverage action and the underlying litigation.
The court concluded that a stay was not justified under either California or Delaware law because the duty to defend question could be resolved as a matter of law by comparing the allegations in the underlying complaints with the terms of the insurance policies. Because resolving the coverage issue did not require factual determinations that overlapped with the Social Media Litigation, the court denied Meta’s request for a stay.
On the merits, the court granted the insurers’ motion for summary judgment, holding that the underlying complaints in the Social Media Litigation do not allege any harms caused by an “accident” that would trigger coverage. The court explained that determining whether conduct constitutes an “accident” under California law requires a two-step inquiry: (1) do the complaints allege anything other than strictly deliberate conduct; and (2), if not, do they allege an additional, unexpected, independent, and unforeseen happening that may have produced the damage?
As to the first step, the court concluded that the Social Media Litigation exclusively alleged harm arising from deliberate conduct. The court reasoned that because the complaints allege Meta’s platform design decisions were intentional business choices designed to “maximiz[e] user engagement,” the complaints allege deliberate rather than accidental conduct.
The court next considered whether the complaints alleged any “additional, unexpected, independent, and unforeseen happening” that produced the damage. Evaluating the alleged harms from Meta’s perspective, the court concluded that addiction and other harms were foreseeable outcomes of designing platforms to maximize engagement among children.
Because the underlying complaints alleged harm arising from Meta’s intentional platform design, and not from any unforeseen event, the court held that the insurers have no duty to defend Meta in the Social Media Litigation and granted summary judgment in favor of the insurers.
Comments
As companies are increasingly sued for public nuisance and other causes of action relating to the effects of their products on society, the “no accident” defense is often at issue in ensuing coverage disputes.
In reaching its decision on “accident”, the court drew on California cases holding that deliberate corporate actions which yielded “foreseeable” harms did not constitute an “accident,” including those involving opioids and gun accessories. The court emphasized its consideration of the insured’s “undeniable, high-level motive in pursuing the course of action” that is challenged by plaintiffs, which purpose is then “juxtaposed against the allegedly negligent or accidental conduct.” Applying that framework, the court concluded that the alleged harms to children were not accidental because they flowed from Meta’s overarching purpose of designing platforms to maximize child engagement. Even if Meta did not intend the specific harms alleged, the complaints tied those harms directly to deliberate design choices, making the injuries a foreseeable consequence of those choices and precluding a duty to defend.