At today’s Leon County School Board meeting, the Board will consider Superintendent Hanna’s recommendation to approve a contract with Wagstaff & Cartmell and four firms as co-counsel to represent the Board in a lawsuit against social media companies.
The contract will provide authority for the law firms to file a lawsuit against Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Smapshot, TikToc, YouTube, and Google, among others alleging marketing practices making the platforms addictive resulting in additional costs to schools in addressing issues related to the addiction.
The proposed contract is with Wagstaff & Cartmell and four co- counsel firms, including a Florida firm. Under the terms of the contract, the law firms are entitled to receive 33% of any monetary or non-monetary recovery. Attorney fees due for non-monetary settlement proceeds cannot exceed money received. Costs will be paid from any recovery.
The outcome of this litigation is uncertain but in a related case the trial judge ruled the defendants were not immune from negligence claims under federal law, allowing the case to proceed to discovery.
Leon School Board to Consider Lawsuit Against Social Media Companies added by Steve Stewart on
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@ Priscilla West = I have been saying for YEARS to remove Computers from the Class Rooms and go back to teaching from Text Books. It will be a LOT cheaper to supply the Text Books then Computers and all the Updates needed. I still stand by that.
How can you Sue Meta, Facebook, Instagram, TikToc, YouTube, and Google and others on behalf of other peoples KIDS? Next you will be Suing Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, Sammy Hagar and others because there are Kids that are Alcoholic’s. Or Sue McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s and others because Kids are Obese. The only thing YOU can do is Ban the Kids from having Cell Phone Use in School. Make them turn them off and keep them in their Locker.
When around half the students are at levels 1 and 2 on the FAST language arts assessment I don’t think it’s the fault of computers.
Parents who didn’t want their children to have laptops were ignored because school districts made this their aim. Districts around the nation brag about their “1:1 student:device ratio.” In chat groups everywhere, helpless parents threw up their hands saying, “they have to have them for homework.” I didn’t want my kids on screens at DeSoto Trail, but it was not an option, so we moved to Classical. PARENTS need to make these decisions for and about their children. Using taxpayer dollars to sue megacorporations? The honest path might include disallowing smartphones in schools, making school wifi and equipment unable to access social media, sticking with physical textbooks (only), and strongly advising parents to stop paying data plans for children to have unfettered internet access in their pockets.
Look at where we are now. Taxpayers having to fund lawsuits against Facebook and TikTok. How about parents worry about the effects of TikTok on their children and Rocky and the boys concentrate on Math, History, Science and English teaching.
Rocky is just looking for an excuse for his failing school district.
Whether or not the kids use social media is none of his business, that falls under the parents purview. If he doesn’t want social media in his school he should ban cell phones, not go off on a litigious search for a scapegoat.
Rocky Hannah should be fired, he has been dishonest from the start. Just ask Jackie Pons…
P.S. I wonder how much money those four law firms are gonna donate to Rocky’s re-election campaign?
I’d be curious to see a detailed list of these so-called “issues related to the addiction” that the schools are forced to address, and a detailed breakdown of the costs incurred by the Public Indoctrination System to deal with these “addictions”.
Then again, you could simply prohibit the use of cell phones during class… you know, that little ol’ thing called Rules and Pilicies.
The planned lawsuit would likely be unnecessary if parents/guardians were to supervise their children’s use of the computers. This is especially true concerning the computers given to school children for use in doing homework, which are supplied at taxpayer expense,