Recently, juries throughout the country rendered verdicts against social media companies.  In New Mexico, a jury found Meta liable in a case brought by that state’s attorney general and imposed $375 million in civil penalties after concluding that Meta violated New Mexico consumer-protection laws. The state alleged that Meta misled users about the safety of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and enabled child sexual exploitation on its platforms. A day later, a Los Angeles jury returned a $6 million verdict against Meta and Google in a case brought on behalf of a young woman who alleged that Instagram and YouTube were designed in a way that addicted her as a child and substantially contributed to depression, anxiety, and other mental-health injuries.These cases are among the first jury trials to test the central theory driving the national social-media litigation: that the platforms’ allegedly harmful conduct lies not merely in third-party content, but in the product design itself, which includes features such as infinite scroll, auto-play, compulsive notifications, and recommendation systems engineered to maximize youth engagement.  These cases will have wide ranging impacts because they are seen as “bellwether” cases (essentially, these cases are used to gauge whether future lawsuits will be successful.  Plaintiff success is used to potentially get settlements for large groups of people to avoid many individual trials or, if the plaintiffs lose, then defendants typically dig in to defend the cases).

The analogy to opioid litigation is not perfect but is illustrative.  In both situations, plaintiffs are alleging that large corporations understood the risks, publicly minimized them, and continued business practices that foreseeably harmed vulnerable populations. In both settings, internal company documents and executive testimony became central. Early verdicts matter because they influence settlement posture. A pair of plaintiff wins does not guarantee global resolutions, but it does change leverage. It becomes harder for defendants to say these claims are legally novel, factually weak, or too speculative for juries to accept when actual juries have now heard weeks of evidence and found liability.

Just like the opioid litigation, expect to see many other state attorney generals continue to aggressively pursue these cases to reach a similar result (At least 40 state attorney generals already have such cases pending on behalf of their residents.  They are looking at the immense money big pharma litigation brought in for their states).  It may be easy to dismiss these results as outliers or argue personal responsibility rather than someone else is to blame (certainly that is the crux of the argument used in the California case against the young woman) or that juries are out to get big companies because they see deep pockets.  That sells our jury system short.  As with any jury trial, members of the community heard the evidence provided by both sides, including from highly paid expert witnesses, and decided the defendants were responsible for the alleged harm.

It will be interesting to see what continues to happen with these cases.  The social media companies already said they will appeal.  They will also lobby legislators to try to limit their liability, which has had mixed success in the past.  But keep an eye out to see if more juries around the country return verdicts for plaintiffs against these social media companies, which may in turn lead to settlements in the future.  For those wondering if they have a case, Rana Law will keep an eye out and notify our loyal readers when we have more information.

The Cardinals home opener was a crazy game but the Cards brought home a winner!  With his love of baseball well-documented, you would assume Tarun treats it as a de facto holiday so he can attend the game in-person.  Wrong!  He believes he is cursed and brings the team bad luck if he attends the home opener.  It does not help that every time he attended the game or went to Ballpark Village in the past, the weather is terrible and the team loses.  He officially stopped going back in 2008 but a friend recently said maybe it is time to go back.  Hopefully the Cards have a great rebuilding year and surprise us with a quicker rebound into contention but, with expectations low, fans can enjoy some “kids” playing the game they love in the big leagues.  Who knows, Tarun may finally decide the curse is broken and make it back to opening day in 2027.Since we did not get a photo of Tarun in Cardinals’ gear for opening day, he wanted to share the incredibly bloated collection of Cardinals’ memorabilia in his office.