A west suburban public school district is poised to join its name to a large and growing nationwide effort to extract potentially billions of dollars from social media companies, in lawsuits claiming operators of social media platforms like TikTok, SnapChat and Instagram owe schools big bucks for allegedly inflicting a "mental health crisis" on students and schools.
Next month, the Glenbard District 87 Board of Education is expected to vote to approve an agreement with a big California personal injury and class action law firm, committing District 87 to file suit against a host of social media app and platform operators.
District 87 Superintendent David F. Larson presented the board with a proposal to hire attorneys from the Frantz Law Group during a board meeting on July 10. While no action was taken at that time, Larson said the board appeared to favor signing the agreement, and could take action at its next meeting on Aug. 14.
James P. Frantz
| frantzlawgroup.com
District 87 includes four high schools - Glenbard North, South, East and West high schools – located in DuPage County. It includes the communities of Glen Ellyn, Lombard, Glendale Heights and Carol Stream, among others.
Should District 87 join the litigation, as expected, it would mark a further expansion of the geographic scope and reach of the fast growing mass action, centralized in federal court in San Francisco.
The lawsuits were first filed this spring in California. Defendants named in the actions include most of the biggest names in social media, including ByteDance, parent company of user-created video sharing app TikTok; Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook; Snap Inc., which operates SnapChat; Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc.; and online game site operator Roblox, among others.
The lawsuits all level similar accusations against these companies, accusing them of creating public nuisances by essentially addicting students to a constant barrage of games, videos, photos and more. They assert this has harmed students and schools alike, creating a mental and behavioral health crisis among American children and teens, encouraging young people to engage in potentially harmful behaviors, while increasing dysfunction, anxiety, depression and other psychological and emotional disorders and maladies.
The lawsuits assert the problems have left school districts holding the bag on the costs of addressing the alleged individual and societal problems, allegedly caused by the ubiquitous use and promotion of social media.
In the months since, trial lawyers from across the county had teed up lawsuits of their own, seeking to grab a share of the potential ultimate payouts.
Lawsuits have poured in from school districts across the country. To centralize proceedings, the federal courts have consolidated the cases in a so-called multi-district litigation, or MDL, in the Northern District of California court.
While new, the lawsuits are not novel. Rather, they are following a pattern established in previous nationwide “public nuisance” litigation against other companies. Trial lawyers last year, for instance, extracted a $1.2 billion settlement from Juul, the prominent maker of so-called vaping materials.
Those lawsuits accused Juul of creating problems in schools among students who adopted “vaping” habits, allegedly as a result of marketing by Juul and other similar companies.
Many of the school districts which are now lining up to sue the social media companies also participated in the mass action against Juul. District 87, for instance, reported receiving $186,000 from that settlement.
In District 87, Larson told the board the district may be in for a similar “positive outcome” from joining in the lawsuits against the social media companies.
According to a memo presented to the board, Larson said the district could use money obtained from any settlement to “assist schools to pay for support and staffing needed to offset the negative impact of social media” and could use other potential “non-monetary relief” from any settlement to “address mental health issues and require the platform to change their algorithms to limit young users, constant use, etc.”
Under the proposed contingency deal with the Frantz Law Group, the lawyers would claim 25% of any funds District 87 would receive under a settlement.
The Frantz firm did not immediately reply to questions emailed by The Cook County Record, asking if other school districts in the Chicago area or elsewhere in Illinois were similarly considering joining the litigation.
No such lawsuits have yet been filed by Illinois school districts in federal court in Chicago, according to court records.
In addition to the San Francisco-based Frantz Law Group, plaintiffs are being represented in the action by attorneys from a host of other prominent mass tort law firms, including: Keller Rohrback, of Portland, Oregon; DiCello Levitt and Casey, of San Diego; Motley Rice, of Washington, D.C.; Ketterer Browne & Anderson, of Maryland; Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, of San Francisco; Durham, Pittard & Spalding, of Santa Fe, New Mexico; Weitz and Luxenberg, of New York and Los Angeles; Beasley Allen Crow Methvin Portis & Miles, of Montgomery, Alabama; Watts Guerra, of Santa Rosa, California; Morgan & Morgan, of Philadelphia; Bruster PLLC, of Southlake, Texas; Wagstaffe, von Loewenfeldt, Busch & Radwick, of San Francisco; Carella Byrne Cecchi Olstein Brody & Agnello, of Roseland, New Jersey; Schochor, Federico and Staton, of Baltimore; The Dugan Law Firm, of New Orleans; Baron & Budd, of Encino, California; Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein, of San Francisco; Gibbs Law Group, of Columbus, Ohio; Levin Fishbein Sedran & Berman, of Philadelphia; and Hendy Johnson Vaughn Emery, of Louisville, Kentucky, among others.