Products Liability & Mass Torts Class Action Review – 2025

Even though the class action procedural device is rarely used in this space, mass torts and multidistrict litigation encompass many of these types of claims. Generally, mass torts are akin to class actions insofar as the litigation is vast and can involve hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs, but in a multidistrict litigation or mass tort, each plaintiff ’ s case stands on its own, and the court generally coordinates all the actions for purposes of pretrial discovery, depositions, experts, and pre-trial motions. However, each plaintiff in a mass tort bears the burden of proving his or her own claims as opposed to each class member being represented by a named plaintiff. As of November 1, 2024 the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation report indicated a total of 173 MDLs across the country. Thirty-nine of those involve more than 1,000 actions, and even more staggering, those MDLs encompass 325,303 total pending actions. MDLs still make up roughly half of all federal dockets in terms of pending cases. Litigation of mass torts grows each year. One example of a prominent mass tort proceeding is the C-8 MDL. First formed in 2013, the C-8 MDL consists of over 3,500 currently pending cases that involve claims of wrongful death or personal injury resulting from alleged ingestion of drinking water that is allegedly contaminated with PFAS. The C-8 MDL plaintiffs allege that they suffered from at least one of six diseases that have a probable link to PFAS exposure. Many of these actions have resolved in 2024. The largest MDL is still the 3M Combat Earplug Litigation, which reached a $6 billion settlement in August 2023, which is to be administered by the firm Archer Systems LLC. Scammers started to get wind of these numbers, and fraudulent actions were undertaken with scammers impersonating Archer Systems’ employees who engaged in unsolicited cold calls to claimants attempting to extract personal identifying information including social security numbers. As a result, the court informed the FBI, and even issued an order directing claimants to reach out to their counsel if they were contact by someone stating they worked for Archer Systems. The 3M MDL still has 148,528 action pending from a historical total of 391,462 action. Another recent MDL outside of the traditional products space involves claims against social media platforms entitled In Re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation , 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 189855 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 15, 2024). The plaintiffs in this multi-district litigation, dozens of states, along with various plaintiffs including children, school districts, and local governments, alleged that social media companies — specifically Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google’s YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat — deliberately designed their platforms to encourage compulsive use among minors leading to serious harms and social implications. The litigation brought claims for unfair practices, consumer protection violations, violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and misrepresentation, as the plaintiffs argued that these companies concealed the dangers associated with their platforms. The defendants moved to dismiss the claims, and the court granted in part and denied in part the motion. The plaintiffs specifically asserted that Meta failed to warn users about known risks of addiction, and knowingly misleading the public about the safety of its platforms, particularly concerning their impact on young users. Meta argued that its platforms, Facebook and Instagram, were not “directed to children” and therefore not subject to the COPPA. Id. at *196. However, the court found that the plaintiffs offered evidence that Meta had actual knowledge that users under 13 were on its platforms. The court noted that assessing whether a platform is “directed to children” would involve a more detailed analysis of various factors and was thus not appropriate to evaluate on a motion to dismiss. Meta also contended that third-party content should not qualify a platform as “child-directed,” and the court rejected this argument. The court reasoned that the COPPA rules did not differentiate between platform-created and third- party content, and accordingly, third-party content should be considered in determining if Meta’s platforms are directed to children under the COPPA. The court thereby declined to dismiss the COPPA claims. Next, Meta argued that § 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) shielded it from the States’ consumer protection claims. The States did not contest that § 230 applied to their claims, which protects providers of interactive computer services from being treated as publishers of third-party content. For immunity to apply, a three-part test must be met: (i) the defendant must be a provider of an interactive service, (ii) the claims must stem from the defendant’s role as a publisher, and (iii) the information must come from another content provider. Meta acknowledged its status as an interactive service provider through platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Meta, however, moved to dismiss claims based on its platform’s design and features, arguing that some features, like infinite scroll and autoplay, were protected under § 230 because addressing them would require less publishing of third-party content and features such as notifications, Likes, and algorithms for content display were traditional editorial functions, and thus also fall under the protection of § 230. Overall, the court agreed that

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