A Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) is grouping more than 80 lawsuits, that allege social media sites targeted young users, for industrywide pretrial proceedings that will take place in San Francisco.
About 70 percent of the cases so far only name Facebook or Instagram, which are both owned by Meta Platforms, as defendants but TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube are included despite having opposed the consolidation, according to media reports.
“They probably feel like they don't have the same degree of liability that Facebook and Instagram do and TikTok has the unique feature that they're owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance,” said Orange County attorney John Shu. “They didn't have any choice.”
As a result of the grouping, the plaintiffs won't have to spend as much money on litigation because there will be one trial for all defendants in the Northern District of California.
“The plaintiffs and the defendants, none of them, wanted the Northern District of California,” Shu told the Southern California Record. “It could give the defendants an advantage because presumably they are represented by massive law firms and my guess is that the defense law firms have much more experience in the Northern District of California.”
Defendants requested Kentucky, Florida, or Georgia while the plaintiffs wanted plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions including Pennsylvania, Utah, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri.
“We find the Northern District of California to be an appropriate transferee district for this litigation,” wrote MDL panel chair Judge Karen Caldwell in the Oct. 7 transfer order. “Several defendants are headquartered in or near this district, and centralization will facilitate coordination with the state court cases pending in California.”
Joining Caldwell on the MDL panel were Judges Matthew Kennelly, Dale Kimball, and Madeline Cox Arleo. Transferee Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is presiding over the pending action entitled In Re Social Media, Adolescent Addiction Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation.
“They all had very similar claims and very similar defenses and when you have a situation like that where the claims and the defenses are essentially the same, they don't have to be perfect,” Shu added. “They just have to be essentially the same. That's why I say Judge Caldwell made the right call.”
As previously reported, the lawsuits allege that the Plaintiffs began engaging in addictive and problematic use of viewing and posting on social media platforms to the point that their interest in any other activity progressively declined.
“Plaintiff subsequently developed injuries including, but not limited to, multiple periods of suicidal ideation, self-harm, an eating disorder(s), depression, anxiety, headaches, fatigue, and a reduced inclination or ability to sleep,” wrote attorney Kirk J. Goza in one complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.