The Jury Has Spoken. Huh?

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A jury in a county court in California ( the trial court, the lowest court in a judicial hierarchy) has held Meta and YouTube liable for, what, like $6M total? I’m not a personal injury attorney, as will be quite obvious, and the way the verdict is being reported is kinda garbled. But what I’m wondering is, what are the plaintiff’s actual damages? Her injury, her suffering?

I mean, an “addiction” usually indicates there’s a physical substance toxic in itself which you can’t do without and which is actually hurting the user and probably other people, too. Amirite?

Is this really, as is being jubilantly asserted, the same thing as the lawsuits against “Big Tobacco”? What is the mental illness equivalent of lung cancer?

As for the (apparently shocking) fact that the defendant companies wanted to, and planned to, attract , and keep, users, and that young people were their most sought after demographic—

um, duh.

In our system, the jury verdict is sacred. The jury is the fact-finder in the first instance. Those good men and true were there in the trenches, on the ground floor of the case. A trial judge COULD override the verdict, enter judgment N.O.V.(notwithstanding the verdict). I don’t know offhand what the standard is for JNOV, but it doesn’t seem a possibility in this case. And generally higher courts are gonna defer to the jury’s findings.

Right now I’m watching the plaintiff’s attorney being interviewed. He’s talkin’ “accountability” He’s talkin’ “children” (oh yeah, who can argue with the “children”, just dont call ‘em “kids”, that’s…. Different vibe..)
What he didnt talk was damages.

The case has a long way to go, and when we get a judicial.opinion we’ll know more bout the theories and facts involved.

But so far, I agree with the WSJ editorial board: if this victory stands, it’s primarily a win for plaintiff’s bar.

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Unfortunately, everything these days is primarily a win for greedy lawyers. The jury system has been undermined by giving lawyers the opportunity in effect to choose the jury, instead of being stuck with a random selection of 12 real independent-thinking citizens. Not that much jury selection would be required in once-great California to accomplish a goal such as this case.

Sigh! Just another step towards the edge of the cliff.

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If this keeps up they’re gonna hafta form a support group with the Vatican.

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Oh, I inadvertently gave you another opportunity to bash lawyers.
Remember: lawyers don’t sue people: PEOPLE sue people.

And if this jury verdict is any indication, “the people” are more than willing to shift/ assign blame for their mental angst.

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Actually, there’s general agreement there are two categories of addiction: first, ingestive addictions, where drugs and/or alcohol enter the body by various routes of administration; second, process addictions, where a repetitive behavior causes generation of the same pleasure chemicals (neurotransmitters) in the “pleasure pathways” of the brain. Examples include gambling, shopping, pornography and others. Naturally, the plaintiff’s bar (and lefty social engineers) ever push the boundaries of just which behaviors qualify. I think the evidence for those named, at least, is pretty persuasive.

These are certainly part of the clinical picture for many substance abusers; process addictions by no means prevent or exclude concomitant process addictions. Many addicts do everything pleasurable. Myself, though the usual suspect would howl, I’m certain that “righteous indignation” - what you see on the crazed, spittle-emitting faces of social justice warriors on the front lines of “demonstrations” (actually riots) - is an extremely potent addictive behavior. As I say, the diagnosis is written on their faces (and I suffered from it, myself, back in the 60’s). Thank God, I recovered! I, like all these people, was insufferable in my absolute certainty of my righteous superiority (note how these same people spot “supremacy” in others, but never in themselves. That kind of fervent denial is, by itself, pathognomonic of addiction.

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Well – by the same token, drug pushers don’t inject drugs into people, people inject drugs into themselves. Does that mean the drug pushers have no responsibility?

I agree with you that the root of the problem lies in us people – ourselves, not our stars. Even so, it is a good idea to get drug pushers out of civilized society.

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When I was an impressionable little child, I was exposed to a then-widespread social influence which inculcated into me the idea that I was inherently unworthy and bad. I lived in fear of it. It controlled all my actions and caused me terror whenever I transgressed, even accidentally, which of course I did. It was on my mind day and night, indeed I often woke with night terrors. I was taught I was predisposed to failure and I knew it to be true.

I wonder if the statute of limitations will ever be temporarily suspended, like it was with the child abuse cases, so that I can sue the Methodist Church?

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…except lawyers don’t “push” litigation. It’s unethical so to do.

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Hypatia – is that really the case? I quite regularly get invitations from law firms to join class action suits. It could be argued that they are not “pushing” litigation – certainly, a class action suit lawyer would argue that way – but to us less sophisticated people outside the legal profession, it surely looks like a duck …

I was pulled into a jury selection pool some months back. The major case was a law firm suing the telephone company on behalf of the State – apparently using some kind of almost “Letters of Marque” process which lawyers in the State Assembly had passed. This allowed the law firm to file a case which apparently the State had decided was not worth pursuing (probably because the basis of the case was unclear language in the law which the State itself had written). The law firm would get a substantial percentage of any settlement. That is getting pretty close of lawyers pushing litigation, n’est ce pas?

Certainly, every lawyer should not be tarred with the same brush. But it has to be noted that the legal profession does a very poor job of policing its greedier members.

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