IN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION
Issue
Whether expert testimony calculating statutory penalty "violations" under state consumer protection laws by counting teen users' encounters with third-party "bad experiences" on Instagram must be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 where that methodology treats Meta as a publisher of third-party content immunized under 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).
What Happened
In this MDL consolidating state attorneys general consumer protection claims against Meta, defendants moved under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 to exclude the testimony of plaintiffs' damages expert Carl Saba, a financial consultant who calculated statutory violations using two primary methods: extrapolating results of an 11-day internal Meta survey (the "BEEF Survey") over six years to count teen encounters with third-party harmful content, and counting instances of teen usage exceeding 30 minutes per day per month. Meta argued that Saba's "Bad Experience Violations" opinion is legally impermissible under Section 230 because it attributes liability to Meta for third-party content that Meta would have had to actively vet to avoid, that both violation-counting methodologies are incorrect as a matter of law under the four lead states' consumer protection statutes (which require violations to be tied to wrongful acts or exposed/injured consumers), and that Saba's methodology was in large part designed by counsel rather than grounded in his own expert analysis. Meta further sought exclusion of Saba's disgorgement opinions as lacking the required causal nexus between Meta's advertising profits and the alleged misconduct, and as impermissible under California, Kentucky, and New Jersey law, which permit only restitutionary disgorgement or none at all.
Why It Matters
The motion presents a significant question about whether Section 230 immunity can be invoked not only to defeat substantive liability claims but also to exclude expert damages methodologies that treat a platform's publication of third-party content as the predicate "violation" for penalty calculation purposes, potentially extending §230's reach into the evidentiary phase of litigation. If the court grants exclusion on this ground, it would signal that plaintiffs in platform-liability cases must carefully disaggregate algorithmic and design conduct from publishing conduct even at the damages-quantification stage.
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