A California state court case over whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman's mental health through addictive app design kicks off on Feb. 9 with opening statements, in a test of whether Big Tech platforms can be held liable for harming kids. The 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M. filed the lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google, which owns YouTube. She says the attention-grabbing design of the platforms got her addicted to them at a young age, according to court filings. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and she is seeking to hold the companies liable.   A verdict against the tech companies could smooth the way for similar cases in state court, and shake the industry's longstanding U.S. legal defense against claims of user harm. Google, Meta, TikTok and Snap face thousands of lawsuits in California. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to be called as a witness at the trial, which is likely to stretch into March. TikTok and Snap settled with K.G.M. before the trial. The woman's lawyers aim to show that the companies were negligent in their design of the apps, that they failed to warn the public about the risks, and that the platforms were a substantial factor in her injuries. If they succeed, the jury will consider whether to award her damages for pain and suffering, and could also impose punitive damages. Meta and Google plan to defend themselves from the claims by pointing to other factors in K.G.M.'s life, laying out their work on youth safety, and trying to distance themselves from users who upload harmful content. Under U.S. law, internet companies are largely shielded from liability for material their users post. If the jury in this case rejects that defense, it could pave the way for other lawsuits claiming the platforms are harmful by design. In addition to cases like K.G.M.'s in state court, the companies face more than 2,300 similar lawsuits filed by parents, school districts and state attorneys general in federal court. The judge overseeing those is weighing the companies' liability protections ahead of the first trial over the claims in federal court, which could happen as early as June. Also on Feb. 9, a landmark trial against Meta is kicking off with opening statements in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the state attorney general has accused the company of exposing children and teens to sexual exploitation on its platforms and profiting from it. The wave of litigation in the U.S. is part of a global backlash against social media platforms over children's mental health. Australia and Spain have prohibited access to social media platforms for users under age 16, and other countries are considering similar curbs.

A Kansas federal judge recently imposed penalties that included fines ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 upon attorneys responsible for mistakenly submitting a brief containing falsehoods created by artificial intelligence. Senior U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson in a Feb. 2 ruling spelled out penalties assessed to Texas-based attorneys Sandeep Seth, Kenneth Kula, Christopher Joe and Michael Doell and Kansas-based attorney David Cooper. The five, as attorneys of record for Lexos Media IP LLC, signed a defective brief submitted in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, as part of a patent infringement case against Overstock.com Inc. The brief contained numerous falsehoods blamed on AI, including citing a nonexistent lawsuit against Topeka's city government, sharing made-up quotes attributed to judges' decisions and sharing citations to cases that are real but held the opposite of what the brief claimed they did. Robinson assessed the following penalties: · A $5,000 fine upon Seth, of Houston-based SethLaw PLLC, who admitted he added the AI-generated citations to the brief and should have checked their accuracy. Robinson also revoked Seth's admission as an attorney in the case, ordered him to self-report to legal disciplinary authorities in the state where he is licensed and ordered him to submit to the court clerk a certificate outlining internal procedures his firm is undertaking to ensure future court filings are accurate. · A $3,000 fine and public admonishment upon Kula, of Dallas-based Buether Joe & Counselors LLC., whom Robinson said violated his duty by signing documents he had failed to review and also failed to acknowledge his breach of legal rules. · A $3,000 fine and public admonishment upon Joe, the case's lead attorney, whom Robinson said violated his duty by signing documents he'd failed to review and failed to acknowledge his breach of legal rules. Because Joe is the managing member of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, Robinson also ordered him to implement procedures there to ensure future court filings are accurate; strongly consider verification and training requirements for all members; and file a certificate outlining those procedures by Feb. 28. · A $1,000 fine upon Cooper, the local counsel for the case, whom Robinson said signed documents for which he didn't check citations. Robinson stressed that Cooper acknowledged he had a responsibility to fact-check those documents, expressed remorse for not doing so and shared detailed information about steps being taken to avoid future infractions of the same type by the Topeka firm for which he is employed, Fisher Patterson Sayler & Smith LLP. · Admonishment upon Doell, of Buether Joe & Counselors LLC, where he is the most junior attorney in the case. Doell wasn't fined. Robinson said Doell was placed in a difficult position by his supervising attorneys, who neither expected nor instructed him to substantively check Seth's work. Here's how the mistake was made Seth said that after writing an initial draft brief in the case, he used ChatGPT as a shortcut to find 10th Circuit and Federal Circuit case law consistent with the facts of the case. Seth said he incorporated some of the citations and quotes ChatGPT provided into his brief but didn't check them. "I should not have incorporated these without checking them first," he said. All five attorneys on Lexos Media's legal team who signed the brief shared the blame for the AI-hallucinated material, Robinson said last month. She ordered the five to show cause in writing as to why they shouldn't be penalized. The attorneys responded by each filing declarations Jan. 5.

The U.S. Justice Department has removed a government lawyer from an assignment in Minnesota after she told a federal judge, "This job sucks" and said immigration authorities had failed to comply with court orders, according to a source familiar with the move. Julie Le, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had been detailed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota as hundreds of lawsuits flooded the court there from people challenging their detention during the Trump administration's immigration enforcement surge. U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell had ordered her and another government lawyer to appear before him in a St. Paul courtroom on Feb. 3 to explain why the administration had repeatedly not complied with court orders in several cases including ones directing the release of detainees. According to a court transcript, Le told the judge she had "stupidly" volunteered to work at the U.S. Attorney's Office starting January 5 to help it address hundreds of lawsuits that had arrived challenging the detention of people swept up in "Operation Metro Surge" in Minnesota. "What do you want me to do?" she said, the transcript showed. "The system sucks. This job sucks." A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration was complying with court orders "and fully enforcing federal immigration law", blaming high caseloads on "rogue judges." The source said the Justice Department had cut short Le's assignment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called Le's remarks "unprofessional and unbecoming" but did not say whether she had returned to her previous job. Le did not respond to requests for comment. During the Feb. 3 hearing, Le said she had worked days and nights on the cases and tried to ensure court orders were complied with. But she said she had not received proper training from the Justice Department and had struggled to ensure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement complied with all court orders, "which they have not done in the past or currently". "Sometime I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep," Le told Blackwell, according to the transcript. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota has come under strain as it faces a flood of immigration petitions and cases accusing demonstrators of assaulting federal agents. Six prosecutors, including some senior officials, resigned earlier this month in protest against how President Donald Trump's administration handled the investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration agent. Blackwell, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, said he understood "the concerns about all the energy that this is causing the DOJ to expend, but, with respect, some of it is of your own making by not complying with orders." Le said she shared his concerns about how the immigration cases were being handled. "I am not white, as you can see," she said. "And my family's at risk as any other people that might get picked up too, so I share the same concern, and I took that concern to heart."