Landmark verdict targets social media design, awards $6 million

The jury was split 10-2 on questions regarding Meta and YouTube's negligence regarding design, foreseeability and harm to the plaintiff. They voted 9-3 on damages and apportionment.

The landmark case centered on claims by Kaley, now 20, that Instagram and YouTube were designed with features intended to maximize children and teen user engagement, creating addiction-like behavior that worsened her mental health and disrupted her development. She filed the lawsuit when she was a minor.

Her case is one of thousands that are pending in the coordinated litigation before Superior Court Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl. According to the docket, two more trials are expected this year. Social Media Cases, JCCP5255 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Oct. 24, 2022)

Companies that own Snapchat and TikTok settled Kaley's claims days before trial but remain as defendants in the other cases.

The plaintiffs' team was led at trial by Lanier Law Firm founder Mark Lanier. He was joined by his daughters Rachel and Sarah, also at Lanier Law, Mariana McConnell of Kiesel Law LLP, Rahul Ravipudi of Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP and Joseph VanZandt of Beasley Allen Law Firm.

They issued a joint statement. "[T]his verdict is bigger than one case," it read. "For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features.

"Today's verdict is a referendum - from a jury, to an entire industry - that accountability has arrived," it continued. "Thousands of individuals and families continue to litigate in the Los Angeles Superior Court. We will carry this fight forward on their behalf with the same commitment and determination that brought us to this verdict today."

Meta was represented at trial by Covington & Burling LLP partner Paul W. Schmidt.

Google was represented by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner Luis Li.

The defense attorneys did not speak to the media outside of the courthouse after the jury was dismissed.

A Meta spokesperson, Stephanie Otway, said in a statement: "We respectfully disagree with the verdict. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At trial, Meta and Google framed their defense around Kaley's early childhood prior to her use of YouTube at 6 and Instagram at 9.

This included, according to the defense, instances of verbal and physical abuse from her mother, abandonment issues when her father left when she was 3, alleged exposure to domestic violence that she denied witnessing and fear that her sister was going to commit suicide because of an eating disorder.

The companies relied on medical records and testimony from mental health care providers, which the defense argued proved the indication that social media played only a limited role in Kaley's treatment discussions and there was no diagnosis that she suffered from any form of addiction, let alone one connected to social media that led to her anxiety and body dysmorphia diagnoses.

The attorneys presented new arguments in the late afternoon, when jurors were asked to decide whether punitive damages were necessary in Kaley's case.

Kuhl read stipulations informing jurors that Meta's stockholder equity stood at approximately $217 billion and Google's parent company at roughly $415 billion, figures both sides returned to repeatedly in argument.

Lanier, for the plaintiff, thanked the jurors for their work on the case and framed the moment as "an extremely important event" that they will "never forget," while urging them to consider punishment and deterrence against the companies.

"This is conduct that was reprehensible to Kaley, and that's what we're here to address, but it's reprehensible to a generation," Lanier said.

He argued the evidence showed Meta and Google knowingly targeted vulnerable young users. "Children are particularly vulnerable," he said. "That developing mind ... they knew. They targeted children."

He revisited documents shown to jurors weeks ago that mapped out internal goals around engagement, including YouTube's early "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" to increase watch time per day to over 1 billion hours by the end of 2016.

Li, for Google, argued YouTube had long invested in safety features, including YouTube Kids, parental controls and tools such as notification limits and "quiet hours," some dating back more than a decade.

"They're not perfect," Li said about the features. "This is part of the challenge of the digital world." He emphasized that users - not the company - ultimately control how devices are used.

For Meta, Schmidt focused on proportionality and causation, telling jurors the question was whether the company was "on the right path." He pointed to internal efforts to improve safety and cited testimony, including from Meta whistleblowers, to argue the company was not intentionally trying to harm users.

Meta's counsel also stressed the case concerned a single plaintiff, not broader societal harms, and noted evidence that Kaley used multiple platforms and experienced both negative and positive effects from social media.

In rebuttal, Lanier rejected the defense framing.

"This isn't about apology, it's about accountability," he said, arguing the companies failed to accept responsibility and continued to place the burden on users. He criticized safety tools as insufficient, calling them "band-aids" and argued meaningful deterrence required a financial penalty.

Jurors deliberated for approximately 40 minutes before returning their punitive verdict.

After being dismissed, two jurors, including the foreperson, told reporters outside of the courtroom that the panel arrived at the $6 million total damages figure by estimating what an average person might earn, while considering what Kaley had gone through and the type of job she is currently able to maintain.

The two jurors also said CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony "didn't sit well with us," adding that he appeared to change parts of his testimony and should have been more prepared before taking the stand.

On Feb. 18, Zuckerberg was called by the plaintiff and testified as an adverse witness.

In his day-long testimony, the Meta CEO largely pushed back on the plaintiff's characterizations. He insisted Meta does not design its platforms to maximize time spent and instead focuses on delivering user value, while disputing internal documents suggesting otherwise and emphasizing the difficulty of measuring and enforcing issues like age and engagement.

Wednesday's verdict in Los Angeles marks the first time a jury has imposed damages tied to the design of social media platforms rather than user-generated content - a distinction central to the plaintiffs' effort to navigate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The statute generally protects online platforms from liability regarding third-party content.

The novel "product defect" theory of the case was spearheaded by Social Media Victims Law Center founder Matthew P. Bergman, whose firm filed many of the cases in the coordinated litigation - including Kaley's.

Jurors were instructed to make liability findings on whether Meta and YouTube knowingly engineered platform designs such as autoplay, infinite scroll, notifications and algorithmic recommendations to foster addictive use amongst young users and harm them.

On the stand, Kaley said that while she experienced things like cyberbullying that made her feel bad, being away from social media made her feel worse, leaving her feeling compelled to keep scrolling despite the negative experiences.