Lexi J. Hazam 

As the chair of her firm’s mass tort practice group, Lexi J. Hazam holds leadership posts in class actions and consolidated litigation over many of California’s recent major disasters. She played important roles in settling several of them recently.

In late 2021, she helped negotiate the creation of an innovative resolution protocol to settle claims individually and efficiently on behalf of the roughly 2,000 victims of the Thomas Fire. Southern California Thomas Fire & Mudslide Litigation, JCCP4965 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 30, 2018).

The following year, she did much the same thing for claims arising out of 2018’s Woolsey Fire. Woolsey Fire Cases, JCCP5000 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 4, 2019).

By now, a large majority of the Thomas Fire claims and well over half the Woolsey claims have settled, with a total recovery for plaintiffs that is “well north of a $1 billion,” Hazam said.

More recently, she helped bring in a pair of relatively quick settlements to wrap up litigation brought by businesses and homeowners damaged by the catastrophic 2021 oil spill off the Southern California coast. The $50 million settlement from the owner of the pipeline that ruptured was approved in April, and the $45 million agreement with the companies whose ships damaged the line was expected to be approved this month. Gutierrez v. Amplify Energy, 8:21-cv-01628 (C.D. Cal., filed Oct. 4, 2021).

“Essentially, the settlement was reached within about a year of the spill, and people are being paid a year and a half later, which is really great,” Hazam said.

Her next massive case may not conclude so quickly. Hazam is a co-lead counsel for parents and school districts in nationwide multidistrict litigation against Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. It accuses the companies of causing widespread mental health problems among young people by addicting them to social media. In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, 4:22-md-03047 (N.D. Cal., Oct. 24, 2022).

She said the lawsuit alleges that “the design of these platforms deliberately addicted” tweens and teens and “led to injuries arising from that including mental health injuries including serious eating disorders, depression, anxiety, suicidal behavior … and suicide cases.”

The plaintiffs counsel “are pleading very detailed product defect claims,” Hazam stressed. That approach could evade defenses raising Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

“The algorithms are content neutral,” she said. “But what they are designed to do is just whatever they can to keep you looking.”

In fact, they argue that without the defective design features, users wouldn’t be injured even if the same objectionable content were on the sites.

Hazam said the social media platforms have all the hallmarks of a product necessary for product liability causes of action. “The fact that it is something that is digital and exists in the 21st century doesn’t change that for purposes of tort law,” she said. “We maintain that we are attacking the design of it — not the content.”

— Don DeBenedictis