Barbadian businessman sues owners of Facebook

Bar­ba­di­an busi­ness­man, Charles Char­lie Spice Lewis has filed a law­suit against Meta Plat­forms Inc., seek­ing US$50 mil­lion in com­pen­sato­ry dam­ages.

The on­line pub­li­ca­tion, Bar­ba­dos TO­DAY, re­port­ed Wednes­day that Lewis and his US-reg­is­tered dig­i­tal com­pa­ny, Spice Hold­ings, is seek­ing dam­ages af­ter the own­ers of Face­book and What­sApp abrupt­ly sus­pend­ed and delet­ed sev­er­al of Spice Hold­ings’ key busi­ness ac­counts, caus­ing ma­jor dis­rup­tion to glob­al op­er­a­tions.

Lewis, rep­re­sent­ed by Inn Cham­bers in Bar­ba­dos, said the af­fect­ed ac­counts were tied to In­sta­Jobs Live (In­sta­Jobs.Live), a re­al-time livestream plat­form con­nect­ing job seek­ers with em­ploy­ers and re­cruiters.

“This ac­tion by Meta has al­so af­fect­ed oth­er plat­forms owned by Spice Hold­ings — In­nPos.com and Ko­toEx­change.com,” Lewis is quot­ed as say­ing by Bar­ba­dos TO­DAY.

The law­suit ac­cus­es Meta of tor­tious in­ter­fer­ence with prospec­tive eco­nom­ic ad­van­tage, breach of im­plied con­tract and good faith, un­fair and de­cep­tive trade prac­tices, and neg­li­gent in­flic­tion of eco­nom­ic and rep­u­ta­tion­al harm.

“Meta’s ac­tions have caused se­vere dis­rup­tion to a law­ful en­ter­prise, re­sult­ing in se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial loss, rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age, and emo­tion­al dis­tress,” said M. Adri­an King KC, lead coun­sel for the plain­tiffs.

“Our clients’ com­mer­cial suc­cess and cred­i­bil­i­ty were tied to their pres­ence on Meta plat­forms, which were tak­en down with­out cause, warn­ing, or due process.”

Lewis said mul­ti­ple ap­peals to Meta were un­suc­cess­ful, and there has been no ex­pla­na­tion or re­in­state­ment.

A le­gal no­tice dat­ed Ju­ly 1, 2025, gives Meta 14 days to re­spond in writ­ing. If no en­gage­ment oc­curs, Lewis said le­gal pro­ceed­ings will move for­ward in a US fed­er­al court or an­oth­er com­pe­tent ju­ris­dic­tion.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Jul 2, CMC

CMC/ag/ir/2025