When it came time to pick the jury for a landmark, bellwether social media addiction trial against Meta and Google, Mark Lanier had a choice to make: Did he want a jury more likely to find liability, or a jury more likely to maximize damages?
“In this case, I made the choice for a liability jury,” Lanier told The Texas Lawbook in an interview Thursday. “In this case, the most important thing was to win. I told the team, we may win and only win $250,000, but I want to make sure we win.”
The trial lasted more than a month and ended March 25. Jurors found that the tech companies — Meta Platforms Inc. and Google’s YouTube — had intentionally designed their platforms to be addictive and had caused a woman’s mental health issues. The jury awarded the plaintiff, identified only as K.G.M., $3 million in compensatory and $3 million in punitive damages.
He also decided not to ask the jury for a specific damages award. The jury heard evidence that the plaintiff’s mother, prior to trial, encouraged her to pursue the litigation because of the amount of money that could be awarded.
“I didn’t want to be the greedy lawyer that fed that story, so I told the jury, ‘You make that decision,’” he said.
Lanier, who was hired in October to take the state court case to trial in California, got to sit at counsel table alongside two of his daughters, Rachel and Sarah. It marked Sarah’s first case to take through to a jury verdict and was the seventh trial Rachel and Mark have handled together.
“It was the von Trapp family lawyers,” he said. “It was a blast. And of course, my wife Beck is also a lawyer, but she quit practicing a number of years ago. … But she helped every morning and evening, and it was truly a family affair. It was an absolute ball.”
Still pending in California state court multidistrict litigation are similar claims against the social media companies brought by roughly 3,000 other plaintiffs, about 150 of whom are represented by Lanier. And a federal multidistrict litigation in the Northern District of California has roughly 2,300 other plaintiffs.
In the state court, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl selected 20 cases at random 20 cases to form a bellwether pool. Lanier said eight more cases are currently lined up for trial and the next trial is slated to begin in June. He’s been asked to try some of those cases but hasn’t yet decided whether to do so, he said Thursday.
Meta and Google had not filed notice of appeal in K.G.M.’s case as of Thursday morning, but an appeal is expected.
Saying he was “very pleased” with the damages awarded in the state court case, Lanier said he believes the dollar amount could help settlement negotiations.
“Sometimes, I try these bellwether cases and I get a billion dollars, or hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, and it can not only frustrate the defendants, who won’t pay that in a mass settlement, but it can also create unrealistic expectations among all the other plaintiffs,” he said. “This is much more in the land of significant enough to make the defendants sit up and notice — it affected their stock price — but yet it’s not the kind of thing where every plaintiff says, ‘I’m going to get my gazillion dollars, too.’”
Another possible key to Lanier’s success in the K.G.M. trial was his use of jury and trial consultant Robert Hirschhorn.
“I don’t pick a jury without him if I have any choice in the matter,” Lanier said. “He is brilliant, reliable, consistent, he has great people who work with him, he’s built a great system, and he’s got a great knowledge bank. I use him in tandem with Lisa Blue Baron. I used both of them in this case, and I have most every case I’ve tried for the last 10-plus years.”
A native Texan, Lanier said it’s been 17 years since he has tried a state court case in his home state.
Is that happenstance?
“No,” he said.
“Right now, nobody knows how to prove noneconomic damages in light of the Gregory opinion. Nobody does,” he said. “And we operate in a state where the appellate courts have no problem reviewing the facts all over again. I don’t want to try my case to the appellate courts. I’d like to try my case to the jury — and if there’s error, fine. But if there’s not, I don’t want to retry it on appeal.”