IN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION
Issue
Whether Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube are civilly liable under product design defect and related theories for harm allegedly caused to adolescent users of the Breathitt County School District, where defendants contest both causation and the adequacy of plaintiff's abatement damages model.
What Happened
In this bellwether trial within the In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction MDL, defendants filed a corrected preliminary witness list on March 17, 2026, pursuant to a pretrial scheduling order, disclosing witnesses they may call live or by deposition designation in their case in chief at the Breathitt County trial. The list identifies Breathitt County school employees — several of whom served as Rule 30(b)(6) designees — whom defendants intend to examine on alternative causes of harm and the district's failure to mitigate, as well as platform employees from Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube who will testify about each platform's safety policies, well-being tools, and internal research. Defendants also disclosed a substantial expert roster spanning psychiatry, epidemiology, education policy, marketing, economics, and platform design to challenge plaintiff's causation theory, damages model, and abatement cost estimates.
Why It Matters
This witness list signals that defendants' trial strategy will center on contesting general and specific causation through scientific experts while affirmatively presenting evidence of platform safety efforts, positioning the case as a significant test of whether product liability theories can survive against social media platforms when defendants offer robust alternative-cause and reasonable-design defenses in the school-district plaintiff context.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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