Meta and YouTube Liable, 2 Consequences - Successful Expert

WASHINGTON - EntSun -- A jury has just found Meta and YouTube liable in a trial which had been compared to the legal actions against the cigarette companies.

The law professor behind that successful litigation -"The Law Professor Who Masterminded Litigation Against the Tobacco Industry" and "a Driving Force Behind the Lawsuits That Have Cost Tobacco Companies Billions of Dollars - predicts at least two major consequences.

First, there will be an avalanche of lawsuits against all social platforms which use similar techniques to hook and hold users because there are far more potential plaintiffs than in the tobacco litigation, predicts public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Second, for that reason, social media companies are likely to do what big tobacco and the food industry tried to dots: ask Congress to pass legislation to grant them national immunity.

But such efforts by Meta and other social media companies are likely to fail, says the law professor who helped stymie requests by food companies and tobacco companies for federal immunity.

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Both failed, although the proposals were supported by the nation's major public health organizations, largely because Banzhaf,was able to persuade a much larger coalition of smaller activist antismoking organizations to oppose such efforts.

Subsequently, when Professor Banzhaf began to successfully use legal action to attack aspects of the food industry which contributed to obesity, similar to his effective use of legal action to fight smoking, food companies persuaded members of Congress to consider a bill to provide them with national immunity from so-called obesity law suits.

Now that there is a second plaintiff verdict against Meta in the California case, the pressure to ask Congress for protection might be much stronger than the pressure which forced big tobacco to seek federal immunity, says Banzhaf.

He explains that there are probably far more people who were harmed by social media than who suffered diseases such as lung cancer from smoking.

Moreover, while it's difficult to fake lung cancer, it would be easy for plaintiffs to claim and/or to exaggerate mental and emotional distress allegedly from their use of social media.

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Moreover, juries are likely to be far more sympathetic to many of the social media plaintiffs who are children, than to the victims of smoking who were older, and therefore arguably should have borne more responsibility, says the law professor.

Because the victims (targets) in many cases are children, it will be much harder to craft warnings which juries will find to be effective in protecting the companies from liability, he argues.

Banzhaf correctly predicted the verdicts against the social media companies, see:
Jury Likely to Hold Social Media Liable -- Its Last Question About Damages Sends Signal (http://prsync.com/george-washington-university/jury-likely-to-hold-social-media-liable----its-last-question-about-damages-sends-signal-5179222/)