Congratulations to our founding attorney, Carrie Goldberg, who was recently awarded an Innovation award at the New York Legal Awards on September 3, 2026.
The annual awards show, hosted by The New York Law Journal, recognizes attorneys whose dedication, innovation, and leadership have profoundly impacted the legal profession across New York. Carrie won the Innovation Award (Individual) for her pioneering use of product liability theory against tech companies.
When Carrie founded C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, she refused to accept that tech companies could recklessly release dangerous products onto the market and evade accountability by using overly broad interpretations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. While Section 230 shields tech companies from liability for third-party content, it was clear to Carrie from the start that it was the tech companies’ conduct and design decisions that was amplifying abuse – it wasn’t just about third-party content.
She thus pioneered the use of product liability theory against tech companies, arguing that tech platforms are products and must be held to the same product liability standards as any other industry. Carrie first used this theory in 2014 against a tech platform involved in disseminating child sexual abuse material (CSAM), claiming the platform was unreasonably dangerous and the injury to her client was foreseeable. The case settled with a six-figure resolution for her client.
In 2017, Carrie would file the first lawsuit against a tech platform using product liability claims. The suit was against the dating app Grindr on behalf of Matthew Herrick, a New Yorker whose ex-boyfriend had used Grindr’s geolocation tools to impersonate Matthew and lure over 1000 men to his home and workplace in under 6 weeks. The case was dismissed because of Section 230, but it would ultimately turn out to be a step towards progress in the fight for tech accountability. “The case was thrown out and we lost in the 2nd Circuit too. But I knew in my guts the theory was correct,” Carrie says. “So I kept suing.”
In 2021, Carrie filed A.M. v. Omegle.com, LLC, an online chat room that facilitated anonymous video streaming between strangers age 13+. When her client, A.M., was 11 years old, Omegle matched her with a pedophile who’d quickly gain her trust to procure naked photos and videos from her, and then blackmail her into three years of sexual servitude and trafficking. As Carrie’s firm and co-counsel argued, Omegle’s fundamental product defect – the random pairing of adults and children — made its harms foreseeable. The suit made groundbreaking case law in 2022 when Oregon District Court issued its decision that the case would advance on all of its product liability claims, overcoming Omegle’s argument for Section 230 immunity. In 2023, the case settled and Omegle.com shut down forever.
When I first started using this product liability theory against tech products, there were many naysayers, who believed suing tech companies was going to shutter the internet… Our adversaries were multi-billion and even trillion dollar companies represented by big law with their fancy suits and marble lobbies. These obstacles we overcame because we saw our clients’ lives overturned by stalkers on dating apps, social platforms addicting their kids, child predators matching with their children on websites. Our clients faced horrific injuries b/c of things that began online – lethal drug overdoses, child abductions, rapes, murders, and coerced suicides. The tragedies were so severe we needed to innovate our approach to the law and to take risks.
For the cost of an index number, we could sue, though. And that is the great equalizer.
–Carrie Goldberg
We’ve since used product liability theory against almost every major platform, including Snap, Amazon, Uber, Meta, Tiktok, Google, Match Group, xAI, and more.
We’re so proud of our founder for the well-deserved recognition for her role in transforming accountability for tech-facilitated harms!
