Aelish M. Baig 

For the last six years and more, Aelish M. Baig has worked nearly full-time pursuing litigation against opioid makers, distributors and sellers. The effort has been described as the largest litigation ever mounted. “It took an army, and we worked around the clock on that litigation,” she said.

She is a leading member of the Robbins Geller team in the national opioid multidistrict litigation, and she co-led the bellwether trial last year in which a federal judge held Walgreens liable to San Francisco for the harm the epidemic has caused there. Last month, the company agreed to fund a $230 million settlement to be used for abatement. City & County of San Francisco v. Purdue Pharma L.P., 18-cv-07591 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 18, 2018).

All told, the opioid litigation nationally has produced settlements totaling more than $50 billion, and while there is still much to do, Baig said the plaintiffs’ teams think it “will generally be winding down in the near term.”

She is on the plaintiffs steering committee in the MDL against the McKinsey consulting firm over its role in marketing opioids, which is ongoing.

And separately, Baig is on the plaintiffs committee in the MDL against vaping companies. But Juul and tobacco giant Altria Group have recently settled, bringing the total settlements in the combined cases to about $2 billion, she said.

So what is she doing now?

“Actually, I have a new line of cases, which I’m very excited about. … the social media cases,” she said. “I would have liked to file them a year and a half ago, but I was just too busy.” In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, 4:22-md-03047 (N.D. Cal., Oct. 24, 2022).

“Essentially, we’re suing Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for deliberating targeting children and teens and exploiting the vulnerability of the developing brains by … amplifying and promoting the most extreme, divisive, titillating, exploitive material to kids in ways designed to be addictive,” Baig said.

The objectionable content includes cyberbullying, self-harm like purging and cutting, violence and how-to videos. Children and teens aren’t “equipped to deal with this deluge of harmful content,” she said, but they are “especially susceptible to the addictive nature” of it.

The social media companies foster the material because it is addictive, the plaintiffs assert. “More user time means more ad revenue.”

The result is a fast-growing epidemic of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety and suicide among young people. A large number of experts, including the U.S. Surgeon General last month, agree there is a “positive link between excessive use of social media and youth mental health harm,” Baig said. “The more you look at it, the more obvious it becomes.”

Baig represents school districts from Marin to Broward County, the state of Arkansas and other governmental entities in the cases.

Their primary goal is injunctive relief. “We don’t want to shut down social media, just like we don’t want to take opioids away from everybody,” she said. “What we want are some precautions put in place to help reduce the harm that’s being created for our youth population.”

— Don DeBenedictis