Product Liability Cases To Watch In 2024

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Product Liability Cases To Watch In 2024

In the relentless battlefield of litigation, social media behemoths find themselves under siege as a barrage of lawsuits accuses them of deliberately addicting and causing harm to the mental health of young users. Parents and school districts have unleashed these legal missiles in both federal and state courts across California, shaking the foundations of the digital realm.

Product Liability Cases To Watch In 2024: Are They Products or Protected Speech?

The heart of these battles lies in a perplexing question: Can the algorithms steering the content feeds be considered products, or are the claims shielded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment, as fervently argued by Meta and its counterparts? Tonya Newman of Neal Gerber & Eisenberg LLP notes, “The theories are consumer protection and data privacy, but I think it also has undertones of what you would expect to see in a product liability case.”

In the federal multidistrict litigation, U.S. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers recently delivered a pivotal ruling, paving the way for negligence claims against Meta, Snapchat, and others. The suit alleges a lack of age verification, parental controls, and notification, akin to tangible products, contributing to the vulnerability of teens to social media addiction.