Why There's No Such Thing as the Perfect Plaintiff & Dealing with Guilt (the non-legal kind)

This episode tackles the concept of guilt, how i've tried to eliminate it from my life but it continues to creep in. Plus, a full rundown of all the legal action this week, some new cases i'm paying attention to, and law school 101 on "eggshell" plaintiffs. You'll also hear my confession about something i've been craving.

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Transcript

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The information and ideas expressed in the allegedly golden podcast for legal explanation and legal analysis, not legal advice. While I am a lawyer, I am not your lawyer. If you need legal advice, please contact a licensed legal professional in your area. My opinions are my own. For better or for worse. Also, I am working with the artist who created this painting on some stuff. People have asked for merch. I need some updated background scene for this podcast. And so I am working with this wonderful artist. Her name is Maggie McDonald. She's an Australian artist to come up with some stuff in that regard. So I will keep you updated about that. But if you like this painting behind me and you like this vibe, the news is good. I wanted to start off today by talking about something that I've been kind of struggling with lately, and something I don't struggle with as nearly as much as I used to, but something that kind of never goes away. And that is the idea of guilt. And I don't mean legal guilt. I don't mean guilt versus not guilt. I mean guilt as in the way that we feel. Now I know that there is some dispute in the psychology community about whether guilt is actually an emotion, which I find fascinating. And I grew up in a time and a place where I was made to feel like I should feel guilty about pretty much everything. I have worked really hard to let go of my guilt about a lot of different things. And I'll tell you my wins and my losses. Um, but it just creeps back in. That that feeling, whether it's an emotion or not, it's definitely something you feel. It creeps back in. And I think that for a lot of us, we were just raised to believe that if something is wrong, no matter how big or how small, the very first place we should look as the cause is ourself. It must be my fault. It must be my fault because I didn't get an A on the math test. It must be my fault if that person doesn't like me. It must be a moral failing of mine if something didn't go the way that I wanted it to go. And, you know, I hated it when it was happening. There was something about me, even at the time as a young person, that was like, this isn't right. Um, and so I think as I've evolved, I've tried to um minimize the amount of guilt I feel. I think a lot of us have. I think a lot of women my age and close to my age, that is one of the main pieces of deconstruction we've had to do is like, oh, not everything is my fault. Not everything is a moral failing of mine, right? Um, and that's hard to do, especially because I think we keep so much of it inside. You oftentimes feel guilt on the inside, and no one else knows that you're even feeling it, right? But, you know, my brain very much automatically goes there sometimes. Like, oh, well, it must be your fault. Whether it's something about the way I look or something about the way I sound, or if something doesn't go right, it's like, well, I must have done something wrong. And I haven't really succeeded at stopping those thoughts from coming, but I have been marginally successful at recognizing those thoughts for what they are. And that is horseshit most of the time. But I've had a little bit of it creeping in lately, and I've been fighting with it a little bit. And it reminded me of this moment that I had years ago that sticks with me to this day. I was shopping at the grocery store back when I used to physically go to the grocery store. Um, this was, I'm not even sure my son was born yet. This was a while, this was at least 10 years ago, maybe more. Um, and I had my shopping cart and I was, you know, going through the aisles, and I got was coming around the corner to the last aisle, which was in the frozen section, and it was the ice cream aisle. And there was a mother there with a little boy, and the little boy was probably, I don't know, five or six, something like that. Um, and they were looking at all these different ice creams, and one of them was an ice cream, and I don't remember which brand it was, but it had a label on it that said like guilt-free or like guiltless ice cream or something. I was like made out of frozen yogurt. But you know how food labels will say like guilt-free, whatever. And so the kid turned to his mom and he said, Mom, what's and my my brain was like, Oh, he's gonna ask what's guilt-free, right? Like he doesn't understand about like diet culture and you know, feeling bad about what you ate or whatever. What's but that's not what he asked. What he asked his mom was, Mom, what's guilt? And a light bulb went off in my head that guilt is not something that we are naturally necessarily taught is a thing. Right? People will tell you when you're young that you will feel sad and you will feel happy and you will feel scared. But I don't think we really recognize guilt for being guilt until someone explains to us what that sensation is. And this kid who was five or six years old, probably kindergartenish early elementary school, did not know what that concept meant. And ever since then, I've really been thinking a lot about I think what a lot of us think about when it comes to guilt, which is is it useful? Is it helpful? There's a lot of debate on that. Um, some people think that guilt is helpful because it can push you into a direction of making things better. Same with shame. Some people think like, oh, shame is good because you know it requires you to change your path. But I think that that fails to understand how deeply rooted guilt can get into a person's mind. That changes the way they see the world entirely. Um, how that can grab onto and control your reaction to almost everything. Right? I mean, for those of us who were taught the first place to look is yourself as the source of the problem. That doesn't mean that you change everything that you see. That means that you hate yourself. It teaches you to hate yourself instead of recognizing things for what they are and making it some failure of yours rather than failures of a system or another person or something you're not even sure is there. Right? Like I see that so much with people who are either deconstructing religion or people who are late diagnosed with neurodivergence. It's like I spent my whole life thinking this shit was my fault. And it wasn't. And that guilt didn't propel them to make big changes, it made them vulnerable, it made them feel less than, it made them feel stuck. And so I really struggle with is guilt a good thing or a bad thing? I think it's mostly a bad thing. Can it ever be good? I don't know. Let me know what you guys think, but I'm gonna tell you some of the things that I have been successful um in in sort of working on my guilt and the things that I haven't. So the things that I have successfully convinced myself I don't need to feel guilty about um at this stage of my life is I don't need to feel guilty that I'm not working hard enough. When I was younger, especially, and I think it probably has a lot to do with the profession that I'm in. It's like if you're not working 20 hours a day, what are you doing? Um, so I've always had this feeling, and my parents are very like worth work ethic kind of folks, um, not working hard enough. And I know now that number one, there is such a thing as working too hard. I didn't think that for the first like 30 years of my life. I'm like, well, that's not a thing. Of course it is. You burn yourself out physically, mentally, emotionally. You're terrible to the people around you. And, you know, work doesn't love you back. Um, I also realized that my working hard is not necessarily the same thing as everybody else's working hard. My hundred percent isn't everybody else's hundred percent. Um, that my 40% is some people's 100%. And so I don't feel guilty anymore about, oh, I haven't worked hard enough or long enough. I will get the things done. I'm better now at focusing on the tasks than I am um on like how long did I work or how much was I struggling or how late did I stay up. Like I don't, I don't feel guilt about that really anymore. I also no longer feel guilty most of the time, little asterisk there, about making other people happy. And that one took a really, really long time. Um I have a little bit of a pleaser personality. I know that probably shocks people, but you didn't know me when I was younger and I wanted everybody to like me because I was an only child and I was uh very much out of place in the uh environment where I grew up. I just never felt like I was, you know, what was expected because I wasn't. Um and so I used to be like, okay, well, I just want not please people to the point of sort of letting go of myself. Luckily, I'm I'm I have too much ego for that. But, you know, I wanted other people to be happy. I wanted my my friends to be happy, and I wanted my family to be happy, and I wanted my my mom and dad to be happy. And I felt a lot of guilt. If they didn't, I felt like it was on me, especially the people close to me. I felt that early in the first years of my marriage, that like if my husband wasn't happy, that was on me. If he wasn't feeling good, that was a failing of mine. I felt guilty about that. And eventually, through a lot of TikToking and a lot of therapy and a lot of reading books, um I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to make other people happy. You can't. It's a fool's errand. You can try not to contribute to other people's unhappiness. Um, you can try to make people feel safe and loved and contented and listened to. But you can't make other people happy. They have to do that for themselves. And I'm really glad and I'm really grateful that I was able to learn that lesson um before my son got old enough that I was really having deeper conversations with him. Because now, having a teenager, um, and I'm I'm not shitting on people who say, I just want my kids to be happy. I know what they mean. What they mean is, I want my kid to have a life full of contentment and enjoyment and to feel like they are living their life to the fullest. I know what they mean. But when people say, I just want my kids to be happy, my first reaction is, but you can't. You can give them the tools to make themselves happy. You can show them what happiness looks like. You can model that for them, you can help them find the things that make them happy, whether it's music or sports or whatever. But I just don't think any of us have a magic wand to like wave over other people and be like, congratulations, now you're happy because of me. And because of that, I was able to let go of all of my guilt about not making it happen for other people. Now, of course, you can make people happy in small moments, right? Like, I do think you can give somebody a gift or say something nice to someone and be like, wow, that made me feel really good. I made that person feel really good in that moment by saying something or doing something nice for them or whatever the love language might be. But in terms of like an overall act, like I just don't feel guilty about that anymore because it's not my job. It's just not. Last, but I will say it briefly because it needs its own episode, and that episode is coming, and that is guilt about food. Um, I have struggled with food for all of my life. I'm I'm guessing I started struggling with it before I was 10. Um, and over the course of time, I've had to do a lot of deconstructing of that and having an unhealthy relationship with food and disordered eating and all of that. And like I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a future episode about that because that one's really important. Um, but guilt about what I have eaten in a day, or guilt about what I'm craving, that one I have let go of. And that's not to say that it doesn't always uh it doesn't sometimes creep in there, like, oh, I shouldn't have eaten that, right? Or that's bad for me. But again, I have learned to recognize it for what it is, and that's horseshit. Things I have not been so successful on when it comes to feeling guilty, and these are the things that I've been struggling with lately, feeling some guilt about um being present for everyone. I want to be present. Like when I'm with my kid, I want to be present, right? I want to be like fully locked in and focusing on him. And sometimes I am, and sometimes I just don't. Sometimes I'm like, I just want to look at my phone, or you know, I don't want to help him with homework. Uh um, and he doesn't always want to be present with me either. He's a teenager, but I feel like it's my job to be present when he wants me to be. And sometimes I have a really hard time flipping that switch on and staying there. And so I will feel guilty about that. You know, I'll go to bed at night and think like, oh, I had the opportunity to really be present with him and I didn't do it. I'm struggling with that one. Um, same with my parents sometimes, you know, if it's like my mom is having one of her moments where she's talking about, I don't know, some issue she has with my dad for the 9,735th time. And I'm like, oh my God, I have heard this for 50 fucking years. I know I'm allowed to be frustrated, but I also know that all she wants is for me to sit there and meet her eye contact and be like, uh-huh, oh wow, that sucks. That's all she wants. And sometimes I can give it, and sometimes I just suck at it. And when I suck at it, I feel terrible. I feel guilty because I'm like, that's what I can give her. You know, I just I guess what I'm saying with with this one is like my energy. Sometimes I feel guilty about where I put my energy. And especially like, oh, I spend all this energy talking to strangers on the internet, and then I can't listen to my own family. Sometimes I feel guilty about that. I'm working on that one. Um, contacting my friends. I lay in bed at night a lot and think, oh my God, I haven't talked to so-and-so in forever. I should text her. Oh my God, I forgot so-and-so's birthday. And I feel guilty about that, even though I know that not only am I busy, they're probably busy. Um, because none of us are great at it at this point. We all have busy lives. And this is friends from, you know, there's a segment of people growing up, there's a segment of people from college, there's a segment of people from law school, and then there's growth, like I, there's all kinds of groups. It can be from any group. Um, and of course, the the friends that I have sort of whittled down to at this point in life are the people who don't care if you text them all the time or like, hey, I haven't talked to you in six months. Do you want to have dinner? People, right? So it's not like anybody's getting mad mostly, but I feel shitty. I feel guilty because when I'm locked in, I'm a really good friend. I listen and I'm thoughtful and I'm helpful and I never judge. And you can tell me anything, and it is in the fucking vault. But I'm not always good about just like, hey, are you okay? So I feel guilty about that a lot, actually. I feel guilty. Okay, this is gonna be funny, but I know my pet parents are gonna understand this. I feel guilty sometimes that I don't do like more fun things with Frank. And I I think that's the internet's fault. Uh, you know, I love having a dog. I've always had a dog. I had dogs growing up, but like when I was growing up, people didn't like take their dog on vacation or like, you know, give it special experiences. It was just like you have a dog, you walk it, you pet it, good job. And sometimes I feel really guilty because I don't like I love Frank, obviously, and I think we're really good family and we treat him really well. I mean, I would love to have his life, but I feel guilty because I see all these people who are like, I don't know, taking their dog to the beach or doing all of these like very specific pet things, and it's like, well, I don't do that. Am I terrible? Makes me feel shitty. He even, even his daycare, um, I could take him to that far more often than I do. It's not that far away from my house. But I don't because it's a pain in the ass to get him there, and then it's a pain in the ass to pick him up. And depending on what's happening with the day, with like work schedules and picking up kids and all that stuff, it's like, ugh, I can't add that in. He's the first thing that gets dropped, and that makes me feel bad. And I I don't think that he deserves to be treated like a king. I mean, he's a dog, but at the same time, I'll then run across some video where it's like, remember that you're your dog's whole world. And it's like, well, fuck. Now I feel terrible. So I feel some guilt about Frank. And last, I have not said this out loud to anyone yet. But I figured why not say it out loud to everyone all at the same time. Um, because I'm feeling weird guilt about it. With everything going on in the world and just like the stress of my individual life and my the stress of the bigger world, like we're all looking at ways to cope, you know? And we all cope through different things, whether it's like food or drinking or shopping or whatever our coping mechanisms are. Um, there is one thing that over the past couple of months I have been dying to do that I haven't done in 20 years. And that is that I really want to smoke a cigarette. It. I do. I haven't smoked in a really long time. I smoked socially in like high school, college, law school. Um, one day I just quit. I've always been able to quit things. I don't have an addictive personality at all. Um, mostly because I didn't like the way it smelled and like it my hair, I didn't like it in my clothes, that kind of stuff. But lately, when I'm like out having a cocktail, especially if I'm sitting outside somewhere, I really want a fucking cigarette. And I don't know if that means I should do it or not, because I feel guilty about it. I feel guilty like that is bad for you. You would not want your child to do that, right? Like, how is that going to help? But also, but also in the grand scheme of the world, is it really going to matter if I smoke a cigarette? I know I won't, I won't like not be able to stop because I've stopped before. But I'm feeling guilty about it because I feel like, you know, we've been convinced for so long, like it's a disgusting habit. And it is, it smells, it's terrible, but like I really want it. So I feel guilty about that. Tell me what you feel guilty about or what you don't feel guilty about, or help me with your tricks for not feeling guilty about things. Because I think we all struggle with it. And I think in trying to become who we are, especially those of us who are trying to become a version of ourselves in middle age that our sort of younger selves would have looked up to and liked, getting rid of guilt is a big part of it. On to civil disorder. There's a lot and not a lot at the same time. Um, starting off, you know, speaking of guilt, uh, one of my guilty pleasures is The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It's one of the only reality shows that I like. And the new season premiered last week, and I binged the whole thing in about 24 hours. I love that show. I cannot help myself. Um, and I have to say, the fact that Demi, spoiler alert if you haven't watched it yet, the fact that Demi was not there, did not participate, did not give interviews for the vast majority of the season, um, I think is a result of the fact that she has been sued. So that case where she has been sued by Marciano for defamation based on um SAID her. Comments made um by her on the show and elsewhere that he essayed her at the Vanderpomp Villa. Um, I don't know the timing exactly of when the show was filming, when she stopped filming, and when that lawsuit was filed, but I have a feeling they're connected because once a lawsuit like that is filed, you cannot talk about that anymore. I am sure she got uh sound legal advice. Uh, don't talk about that in public. And you know, once something like that is out there, you're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because you're on the show. It was like the main storyline of last season, um, but you can't talk about that, and you can't pretend like it didn't happen, right? Because there are storylines from last season that bleed over into this season with like Jesse and the whole thing. So I think she really screwed herself there. Um, I think she went a little bit too far, and now I think she is probably sidelined from talking about that on the show, which means there's no purpose in her being on the show. So we'll see if that gets resolved. You know, she has a motion to dismiss out there. We'll see if that gets resolved. But, you know, my guess is, and I had heard that, you know, she wasn't on the whole season. Um, you know, when they would show like the um the interview set and then they would have crickets um because she wasn't there. I thought that was kind of funny. The social media trial has wrapped up. Um, closing arguments were at the end of this last week. I believe the jury is deliberating as I am recording this. Well, not over the weekend, probably. Um, but the closing arguments were last Thursday or Friday. Um, and again, we don't have cameras in the in the courtroom, so we can't see it exactly. Um, but from the reporting, it sounds like everybody pretty much stuck to their theme that they had at the beginning of the case. It's always fun to um compare openings to closings. Um, because, you know, ideally, if you can, you want to say in your opening, here's what I'm gonna prove to you, and then in your closing, say, see how I proved it to you, I proved to you exactly what I said that I would. Um, but it sounds like everybody kind of stuck to their same themes. Meta and YouTube stuck to this issue of causation, right? Less about whether their product was addictive and more about did it actually cause harm to this woman, this plaintiff. Um, apparently they both said in their closing arguments that she had been to many mental health professionals over the course of her childhood and early adulthood, and not a single mental health professional posited or connected social media use to her mental health issues. Well, I mean, I see where they're coming from, but like, is that really what a psychologist is going to do? Um, I, you know, I haven't ever seen those records. They're probably confidential. I probably won't. But just thinking about how the jury is going to take that, like, just because a professional doesn't say this is Instagram's fault doesn't mean it isn't Instagram's fault. Um, they were really trying to the whole time just create this issue of breaking the link of causation to say, think what you will about our products, think what you will about our algorithms. Um, but she had an abusive mother, a difficult family life, a hard time at school. And if she suffered, um, that was because of that and not because of us. Uh, the plaintiff's lawyer, of course, did, you know, plaintiff's lawyer tricks. Um, he used lots of metaphors, which he's been very good at in this case. You know, the opening, he said that um the algorithms made these websites like casinos, which I thought was very effective. Like you get in, you can't get out. Um, he used some different ones in closing. Um, he said that um these sites can be like a Trojan horse. It looks like it's fun, it looks like it's entertaining. And then, you know, you bring it into your life, and all of a sudden you're being attacked. Um he also used this metaphor, which I thought this was pretty good. Um, he said, you know, they have engineered this addiction. What's critical to the plaintiff's case is not only that these sites are addictive, but that they designed them to be addictive. They intended them to be addictive because they want people to stay, because they want them to become users and ultimately they'll buy stuff off of ads or whatever, whatever. Um and so when he's talking about how they engineered addiction, the metaphor that he used is it's like when you go to one of those restaurants and they put tortilla chips in the middle of the table and they just keep bringing them. Right? That is engineered to have you keep eating tortilla chips. Now the metaphor falls apart a little bit because if you're you eat too many tortilla chips, then you don't order an entree and then you they don't make as much money. But I see the point that he's making, right? If it's in front of you, you're gonna eat it, right? Um he also apparently his last sort of act, his last big metaphor, um, was a causation metaphor because he knows that that's probably his biggest hurdle. Um, and I think I said this in last week's episode that the plaintiff doesn't have to prove that Instagram or YouTube was the sole cause of her mental health problems, but it does have to prove that they were a substantial cause of her mental health problems, right? They had a significant effect on her mental health problems. And what this plaintiff's lawyer did was he brought out in front of the jury a cupcake, like a cupcake from the cupcake store from the bakery, and it was kind of a flat cupcake. And he said, Look, this cupcake has baking powder in it, but it doesn't have a lot of baking powder in it, and because it doesn't have baking powder in it, it didn't rise very much. It's not a super fluffy cupcake, right? However, the baking powder was still a part of the baking process, and he used that to analogize these algorithms, these filters, these functions may not have been the whole cause of her mental health problems. But without these things exacerbating it, it wouldn't have been this bad. And that's kind of where he left it. So the jury is deliberating. We'll see how long they deliberate. Um, because this is in California state court, it is 12 jurors, they only need nine to agree on a verdict. Um, remember that in civil cases it's different than in criminal cases. You can have less than unanimous verdicts, depending on where you are. Um, and for this case, they only need nine of the 12. Um, the judge has instructed the jury to treat each defendant platform as if it's its own case. So, you know, don't lump Meta and YouTube together. What's the case against Meta? Go through all the elements on that and then stop and go back. And what's the case against YouTube and do that? That they are separate actors. It seems to me, just from what I have read, that if they were going to split the baby, that YouTube is in a better position than Meta. Because YouTube doesn't have filters and YouTube, you know, YouTube likes and follows seem to have been a little bit less important to her than Instagram because she was a teenage girl at the time that this was happening. Um, but the YouTube lawyers did point out in closing, like, she said she was on YouTube at eight years old. Why wasn't she watching YouTube kids? We have a whole YouTube kids. That's a parenting problem, not a YouTube problem. And I think that's kind of a fair point. So if they were going to split it, my guess would be that YouTube would be in a better position than Meta. Um, but we will we will find out. Um, the plaintiff's lawyer argued something that comes up in tort law a lot. It's called the eggshell plaintiff rule. And I'm gonna talk about it when we get to legal ease. But um, it is this concept that you take your plaintiff as you find them. In other words, you don't get to have a perfect person suing you. Um, so that allows them to make the argument of maybe she did have existing mental health problems. Maybe she did have a bad family life. But the fact that she already had some problems doesn't mean that what you did to her didn't make it worse. You don't get a perfect plaintiff. You don't get to have somebody suing you who started at zero. Maybe she started at 30% and you took her to 100. The point is you took it to 100, um, which is a good argument for them to make. And again, I'll explain that in the next segment, but it's something really common in personal injury type cases. Um there are obviously three potential outcomes for any trial. Um, actually, there's more in this one because they've got two different defendants, but you know, the jury could be hung in a mistrial. It's less likely when you only have to get nine out of 12 people. Um, there could be liability, meaning plaintiff wins and both Meta and YouTube are held liable. And you can have no liability, which means the plaintiff gets nothing, or you can have some mix between the two defendants. Um, if there is liability on the part of one or both of the social media platforms, they of course are going to immediately appeal. Um, however, that will give all of the people in the thousand plus other cases that are just like this some indication of what works. I mean, regardless of what happens here in this particular case, you know, it is a bellwether case, meaning everybody kind of wants to see how this one goes. Regardless of how it turns out, everybody involved is learning from this experience. They're learning what arguments work and don't, what juries like and don't, what things to focus on. So it's it's a learning experience, no matter what. Um, so even if the plaintiff loses, that wouldn't be great, obviously. But hopefully they can find out what was the cause of the loss, what was the problem. And then they can fix it for the next time. Um, but you know, the the plaintiff's attorneys have been saying in the news like the fact that we even got this to trial is pretty much a win. And I think there's some some truth to that. The fact that this has been brought into the public consciousness, I think is is good, and that is a win for them because no one has been able to do this so far. No one has been able to challenge a social media company on its its, not just its content, but on its structure, on its design, and get this far. This is the first time this has ever happened. And if that puts pressure on the companies from the public, from um stockholders, from Congress, that's ultimately probably a good thing. So I suspect that by the time I do the next episode of this podcast, we will have a verdict and we will break it down and figure out what it means. In the Karen Reed federal civil rights case, which in my opinion is the most interesting of the Karen Reed civil cases, um, you may remember that most of the defendants had filed motions to dismiss in that case. So Procter and Buchanan didn't. They're like, we'll just file an answer. We're not messing around with a motion to dismiss, we're good. Um, but Tully and then all of the citizen defendants, the McCabes, the Alberts, and Higgins, all filed multiple motions to dismiss the case on various legal grounds, some related to um free speech, some related to just typical 12 B6 failure to state a claim arguments. And Karen Reed's responses to those were due on Friday the 13th. And what she decided to do rather than respond to those was to file an amended complaint. So if you're not aware, in federal court, and frankly in most state courts, when somebody challenges your complaint and says that complaint does not meet the standards required by law, um, you can either respond to that with legal arguments of your own that say yes, it does, your motion is wrong, or you get one free amendment of your complaint during the case. Um, if you want to amend your complaint after the first one, if you want to get to the second amended or the third amended or the fourth, you have to ask the other parties and you have to ask the court. But you get one for free. Everybody gets one free one, one mulligan. So what Karen Reed's team did here was rather than fight these motions to dismiss, they just filed an amended complaint and presumably attempted to cure the things that the defendants had pointed out were legally problematic. Now, I am still going through comparing those two documents to each other because it's a lot. And I will probably do a video, a long video on that on YouTube later this week, um, or next week. But it appears that what she has done is tried to add more about the coordination between the Alberts, the McCabe's, Higgins, and the police department. That they were actively coordinating with each other, that they were actively lying in order to cover up their relationships. These are her allegations. They're just allegations. It's just a complaint. Um, and then focusing on things that were done outside the legal process, like did they plant the pieces of the taillight and stuff like that? And the reason she's doing that is because a lot of the defenses to and arguments for dismissal to her original complaint was these are just government officials doing government official things. And as long as they have probable cause, it can't be a violation of your civil rights, which is mostly true. So this time she has gone back in and added, let me tell you all of the things they were doing that had absolutely nothing to do with their official duties. And let me tell you how closely they were coordinating with these citizens. This was not a matter of just citizens told stories and the cops violated my rights by believing them. This was purposeful coordination, or at least I'm going to allege that it is. So we will see what the defendants do in response to that, whether they file renewed motions to dismiss or whether they say, fuck it, let's just go ahead and go into discovery. I doubt that. They really don't want that. They really don't want phone records and text messages and depositions. Um, but I think that it's probably a good call by her to see if she can just surpass most of the arguments that they were making. It also kicks the can down the road a little bit. You know, the kind of motions to dismiss that some of them have filed, you've got to have a hearing like really quickly. Um and this now alleviates that need. So who knows what their timing is like? Who knows what their plans are? But she cut their motions off at the knees because if you file an if there's a motion to dismiss your complaint filed out there, and you file an amended complaint, that motion to dismiss is moved. It's gone. It doesn't exist anymore because it is moving to dismiss something that is no longer the operative pleading. The operative pleading is the thing that has been filed most recently. It's the thing that we are litigating on. And when an amended complaint is filed, it completely replaces the original complaint. And the amended complaint becomes the operative pleading. So if there's a motion to dismiss to a complaint that no longer matters, that motion to dismiss becomes moot. So again, I will try to go through and look at what all of those differences are later this week. Um, but for now, she has taken a strategy that I think is a good one that probably took them a little bit by surprise. And I'm sure they're trying to decide what to do. Um, I started talking about a couple of new cases this week. Um, I'm really careful about the cases that I start to cover. Some of them, it's like I can tell this isn't going anywhere. Um, but you know, if it has an interesting issue or if I think it has legs, um, or if it relates to something that I think we all care about, then I will start talking about it. Um, Mr. Nag and I did a video on a new uh sports case yesterday, um, the NIL issue again with another college football player, this time a quarterback. Um I think we're both really into those cases because we both really like sports. Um, but that one is about a guy named Brendan Soresby, who's a pretty big deal in college football right now. And it raises some really interesting questions about, you know, how are we supposed to deal with if if you write a contract with a with an athlete and it's like, you know, you can't leave me to go to another school. And if you do, you'll have to pay me a million dollars. This is literally what happened. He left. They said, pay us a million dollars, and he said, Go fuck yourself. So, like, what does the law do? Does it matter? Like, of course he's breached a contract. Of course he owes them the money. But if he can do that, then like, you know, even if they go get a judgment against him and get the money, what does that say for? Other athletes signing those contracts. It's like, well, maybe I'll pay it and maybe I won't. And what does that do for the colleges and universities who are putting, you know, giving athletes millions of dollars based on the obligations that they're signing up for? And the athletes are like, I'll just sign it. It doesn't really mean anything to me anyway. That creates a real legal problem. The other case that I started talking about this week is a case that I think is, unless it settles really early, is going to be really, really important. And that is the case that has been brought by the parents of the Idaho Four against Washington State University. They have sued Washington State University essentially for various types of negligence in what they claim is ignoring Koberger's escalating behavior while not only on their campus but in their employ, um, that he was escalating with his stalking, he was escalating with the way he was talking to women. Um he was utilizing uh school resources to do this stalking. Everybody in the community knew that he was weird and potentially dangerous. Um, and they didn't do anything about it. And the argument that they make is you know, we're not saying that it was foreseeable that Washington State University could have known that he was going to sneak into this house in the middle of the night and kill these people, but that it was foreseeable that he was inevitably a danger to that community. Left unchecked, he was dangerous. And a lot of it is based on um the Violence Against Women Act and Title IX, which have been combined together, and I'm gonna do a big long video on. Um, but one of the things that we know about stalking, one of the reasons why stalking has been um made part of the Violence Against Women Act, um, and made part of Title IX, you know, you you think like, well, that's not violence itself, that's stalking, right? Like you see how sexual misconduct and rape and and um domestic violence and all those things are violence against women, but stalking is not, you know, you're not actually touching anyone a lot of the time, right? Especially when it's cyber stalking. And the thing is, the reason it's included there is because we know that one thing about stalkers is that they escalate. That most stalkers don't just stalk, and then that's it. Stalking is part of a spectrum that ultimately leads to violence. And so the argument that these parents have made is you employed this guy. And they they tell a lot, they make a lot of interesting anecdotes in their complaint. Um, now we'll see if they can prove them. Again, it's just it's a complaint. They're just allegations, they're not facts. Um, but they allege that basically all of the people that that Koberger worked with at Washington State, um, in their criminology department, which I just find so ironic, they were protecting themselves. Like I always have my door open when that guy's talking to a student because I want them to feel safe. I had to have somebody walk me to my car because I was scared of him. Um, you know, they were protecting themselves from him, but they weren't protecting anybody else. Um, and so we'll see where it goes. But, you know, this is it's not a case where Washington State just said, you know, as soon as the complaint was filed, how much of a check do you want us to write? They didn't. They didn't even file a motion to dismiss. So I'm not sure that they are going to just settle it. They may. Um, but this also might be a case where they feel like they need to vindicate themselves, where it's not gonna be good enough to just say they settled for an undisclosed amount because the public will assume that means they did something wrong. But I think it's an important case either way. So I'm gonna keep following it. That video is on all of my other channels if you are interested in watching it. In fact, I think there's two. And last but not least, our good friends, Plake Lively and Justin Baldone. Um, I think we're gonna get the order this week. That's my guess. Um, we are getting really close to the pretrial deadlines where the parties need to know um if they're going to trial, and if so, which claims are those going to be? Um and so I think that we are probably going to get the order this week. In fact, I hope we get the order this week because I'm taking some time off for spring break this week, and that would give me plenty of time to read and digest it. Um, one thing that happened last week, well, a couple things happened uh this past week. One is that the judge, um, sort of out of nowhere, it seemed to us at least, um, entered an order on a sanctions motion that had been raised by Lively a long time ago, like way, way back in the case, asking for Brian Friedman to be sanctioned for public statements he had made about the case, claiming that they would affect, essentially affect the jury pool in the case. And the judge had never really, it had been fully briefed, but it was months and months and months ago. And the judge had never really done anything about it. And then all of a sudden on Friday, seemingly out of nowhere, he's like, that's denied. And, you know, I think there are some people who rightfully so are like, okay, well, he's making this ruling about whether Friedman's statements affect the future proceeding because there's going to be a future proceeding. Or there's the idea that he's about to enter judgment in wayfarer's favor, and so there will be no proceeding, and he wants to make sure that Brian Friedman doesn't have that hanging over his head. Um, it could be those things, it could be something totally different. We have no way of knowing. Um, but I think that kind of shocked people and they were like, are more orders coming? They weren't. Um, and we'll never know what's going on in that guy's head. Who knows? Um, maybe he is thinking, you know, once once he drops this order, if the order is full judgment in favor of Wayfarer, let's just say summary judgment or judgment only plans on everything, the case is over, there's not going to be a trial. Um, then one of the first things the parties will do is say, you know, before we close the case, what are all the things that are hanging out there? What are the the strings that are left, right? And I imagine Friedman would say that that is one of them because that is about him. It's not about the case itself. A lot of the other sanctions motions that are out there would just be moot because they're about the merits of the case and they're about evidence, and that's not going to matter anymore. Um, so I could see the judge thinking about it that way. Um, if it's going to be that he grants it on some but not all, then the parties are going to have to start thinking about do we want to go to trial on whatever's left? Do we have good cases on those or bad cases on those? What does that look like? What are our chances of winning? Um, and maybe he wants them to know whether Brian Friedman's going to be able to be part of a trial team. I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know. Far be it for me to figure out what's in that man's head. But it is interesting. Um, the other thing that happened this week is that um my reason for being was validated once again, which is that the lively team filed a letter with the court as like a notice of supplemental authority saying, like, hey, this brand new case came out. Um, it's mandatory authority for this court. It just came out last week. It goes to the issues that are in the motions that are before you. We thought you ought to know about it. Um, and you know, that's not an unusual thing to do. I went and read the case. I did a video on what that case was about and how I didn't think it changed all that much. But then other people saw that on media, especially on people.com, the lively people had gotten the lively folks had gotten people, the magazine, to write that up as if it was some strategic move by her about having a jury trial. That she really wants a jury trial, which is so misleading. So I'm not sure it really was filed for supplemental authority. It definitely was filed at least for PR in part, if not in whole. Um, that that attempt to mislead people just goes on. And like, you know, I still am not sure who would win this case if it goes to trial. I do not have any hard and fast opinions because I haven't seen all the evidence, but you want the evidence I've seen. I don't have any like, this'll absolutely happen opinions. But if you have to spin, if you have to mislead people, that's a sign. It's a sign of at least what you think about your own case. So for legalese this week, um, let's talk about the eggshell plaintiff rule because it came up in the social media case, it might come up in the Karen Reed wrongful death case. It comes up a lot in personal injury cases. And here's what it's about. So when you're dealing with a tort case, meaning somebody has suffered personal injuries, either physical, mental, something that is personal to them, right? So these are not business injuries, these are not injuries to their bottom line, these are injuries to their person, these are personal wrongs. That's what torts are. Um, a lot of times, the first argument that a defendant wants to make is that person was teetering on the edge of damage to begin with, right? So let's say that somebody has been in a car accident four times. And because they've been in four different car accidents, they have a terrible neck. They have neck problems, they've had to go to chiropractors, they just have a bad neck, right? And then they're in a fifth car accident with you. And in that fifth car accident, the neck breaks, like it fully breaks, and they have to have spinal fusion and neck surgery that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The first thing the defendant is gonna say is why do I have to pay for the whole surgery when I only caused part of the damage? I'm just the very last straw of their injury. And what the law says in almost, I think maybe in every state, is sorry, but you take your plaintiff as you find them. That's what the eggshell plaintiff rule is. You you can't you don't deserve to have a 100% healthy plaintiff suing you, and we're not gonna pretend like you did. So if somebody is very close to needing that surgery and you're just the last that sends them into surgery, sorry, that's how the law works because causation is causation. Now, obviously, that probably sounds super unfair, right? Because it's like, why should I have to, especially if you're paying, why should I have to pay for injuries that I didn't 100% cause? And you can make causation arguments about different levels of liability, right? Am I liable for the whole injury or am I only liable for 30% of it? Right? You can make those kinds of arguments as a defendant to say there's some liability that's on me, but there is some that is not, because I didn't cause that pre-existing injury. But in general, the rule exists to make sure that people aren't foreclosed from bringing a lawsuit for personal injury just because they're not perfect to begin with. I mean, think about what the system would look like if it was like, well, I'm sorry, but you can't sue for mental health damages because you were born with a mental health disorder. Well, that doesn't mean that someone else can't legitimately cause you mental health damage. You just have to roll with what you get. It's also supposed to be an incentive for people not to engage in personal injuries. Because, you know, you want to tell people like, you may hit somebody with your car, and maybe you hit a totally healthy person, and it's really obvious that you only cause a little bit of damage, but what if you hit a non-healthy person? You're on the hook either way. And we can make an argument of lesser liability, but it's still liability. And I think it was pretty cleverly used by the plaintiff's lawyer in the social media trial by saying, look, even if this young woman, well, we shouldn't say young woman anymore, even if this girl had problems at home or was bullied at school, that doesn't mean that your social media platforms didn't take advantage of that and make it astronomically worse. You don't get to argue that the standard should be what does Instagram do to a perfectly healthy, completely mentally stable 10-year-old? The question is, what does Instagram do to this 10-year-old? And so it allows a plaintiff to bring a case and know that it will not just be kicked out of court because the person who brought it isn't perfect. Does it suck sometimes on the defense side? Of course. You know, when somebody sues who is um, especially when there's a personal injury case, and the the plaintiff, the person who's suing, is somebody who does manual labor for a living. Sometimes that gets real tricky about comparative fault and who caused what, right? And did we really cause this problem, or was this problem where your muscles weakened for from years and years of putting up sheetrock? And so when you were hit by a car, it was way worse than it would have been for a normal person. You can make the arguments, but you can't throw the case out just because the person suing isn't at 100%. And it's actually a pretty fair rule, all things considered. Because if people couldn't sue because they had prior injuries, if there was some, you know, legal prohibition on well, we can just have the case thrown out if they already had problems in that same area of their body, people couldn't get compensation for genuine injuries that they caused. But can it be abused? Of course. All laws can be abused. And if you are somebody who accidentally causes personal injury to another, and then you find out that you were the one ounce that caused the levee to open up and all of the water to flow out, that sucks. That is a shitty position to be in. But it is the law, and it is the law in I'm pretty sure every state. There might be one that's not. But just next time, you know, I don't give legal advice on the internet, but just it's just something to think about. That if you cause somebody personal injury by negligence, by leaving something somewhere, or leaving something they can trip on, or having a car accident, or whatever, if they're like a weak person who's already in bad shape, that is not going to get you out of it. So assume everybody is an eggshell. Because a lot of them are. Um, I have a feeling that I'm going to be doing two episodes this week because I have a feeling that when this order comes out, I'm going to need to do another episode, which I am planning on if I can. Um, but whether it's later this week or next week, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for continuing to come back. And no matter what happens, I'll be here because the drama never stops and someone has to make it make sense.