The Brief

A California jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google's YouTube were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $6 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis.

The jurors concluded that Meta and Google should pay the woman $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that amount.

As the verdict was read, the plaintiff, known only as Kaley, looked straight ahead stony-faced, while her lawyers shook their heads in approval. The lawyers for Meta and Google did not react to the jury's decision.

The outcome of this case could influence thousands of other consolidated cases against the social media companies. The litigation has drawn comparisons to the legal crusade that led to industry changes against Big Tobacco in the 1990s.

Joseph VanZandt, the co-lead lawyer for families and others suing social media companies, said Wednesday's judgement is a step toward holding Silicon Valley giants accountable.

"But this verdict is bigger than one case. For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features. Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived," he said in a joint statement with the plaintiff's legal team.

Meta and Google said they disagree with the verdict. Meta said it is weighing its legal options and Google plans to appeal.

"This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," said Google spokesman José Castañeda.

Meta hit with $375 million in damages in separate New Mexico trial

The verdict from a Los Angeles jury over the harms of social media comes a day after a separate jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages for failing to protect young users from child predators on Instagram and Facebook. The New Mexico jury found Meta responsible for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms, declaring that the tech company had flouted state consumer protection laws.

That trial will enter a second phase, in May, in which a judge will decide whether Meta created a public nuisance and if the company must pay additional penalties to address harms. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he will also ask the court to force changes to make Meta's apps safer.

"Juries in New Mexico and California have recognized that Meta's public deception and design features are putting children in harm's way," Torrez said in a statement on Wednesday.

The blockbuster verdicts land against the backdrop of school districts and state lawmakers around the country limiting or banning phone use in schools. This week's verdicts mark the first time juries have decided that tech companies are at least partially liable for online and off-line dangers kids and teenagers encounter after incessantly using social media.

Over a more than month-long trial in Los Angeles, the jury of five men and seven women heard competing narratives about what role social media platforms played in the mental health struggles of a woman identified as KGM, or Kaley, a now-20-year-old from Chico, Calif., who said she first started using YouTube at 6 years old and Instagram when she was 11.

Lawyers for KGM argued that Instagram and YouTube were deliberately designed to be addictive and the companies knew the platforms were harming young people, while the tech companies countered that their services cannot be blamed for complex mental health issues.

KGM's legal team showed the jury internal documents from Meta in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives described the company's efforts to attract and keep kids and teens on its platforms. One document said: "If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens," and another internal memo showed that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to keep coming back to Instagram, compared with competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13 years old.

Under questioning about these documents, Zuckerberg told the jury that keeping young users safe has always been a company priority. "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?" Zuckerberg said.

The trial is a test case, known as a bellwether, tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits brought by parents and school districts arguing that social media giants should be considered manufacturers of defective products for hooking a generation of young people to social media feeds.

Throughout the case, the companies insisted that there is no scientific proof that social media causes mental health issues, suggesting that they are being used as a scapegoat for the multi-faceted emotional issues children face that can have many root causes.

Snapchat and TikTok were also defendants in the case, but both companies settled before the trial began.

LA case focused on design of social media platforms to overcome liability shield

For decades, tech companies have avoided legal liability over the content that appears on their sites because of a federal law known as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says that tech companies are not legally responsible for what their users post. This has made it difficult to bring cases over social media harms to trial.

In the Los Angeles case, lawyers took a different approach by focusing on how tech companies built their platforms. They argued that features like infinite scroll, constant notifications, autoplay and beauty filters made apps like Instagram and YouTube equivalent to a "digital casino," which young people found too irresistible to put down.

By taking this tack, the lawyers pursued a case alleging defective design that was able to get around the high bar set by Section 230. It's not what users post, the lawyers argued, but the very architecture of social media platforms.

"How do you make a child never put down the phone? That's called the engineering of addiction," said KGM's lawyer Mark Lanier, a Texas trial attorney and part-time pastor who had a penchant for drawing on documents with markers on overhead project slides to keep the jury engaged.

Over the course of five weeks, jurors heard from therapists, engineers, tech executives including Zuckerberg, and the plaintiff herself about just how culpable big tech companies should be for contributing to KGM's mental health struggles.

Were her issues pre-existing, or exacerbated by her home life, or deepened by social media?

Meta and Google fought back by underscoring the emotional and physical abuse her medical records indicated she experienced at home. Lawyers for the tech companies also hammered the point that Kaley's own therapist never documented that social media use was a factor in her mental health problems.

From the witness stand, KGM testified that using social media affected her self-worth, as she got further drawn into the apps and withdrew from friends and family.

She developed depression and body dysmorphia, she said, as she continuously compared herself to others and used beauty filters to enhance her appearance.

She so craved the validation of social media, she said, that she would run off to the bathroom at school to check the number of "likes" her posts had received. She testified that it was hard to concentrate on school because all she wanted to do was stay glued to her social media feeds.

The jury was not tasked with deciding whether Meta and Google had created Kaley's mental health woes, but rather if her compulsive social media use was a "substantial factor" in her struggles and if the defective design of the platforms was the direct cause of the distress.

Lanier, who is known for trotting out large exhibits for trial spectacle, closed his questioning of Zuckerberg with one such display.

Lanier and several of his associates held up a 35-foot collage featuring hundreds of selfies Kaley had posted to Instagram, many of which used beauty filters, just as she was struggling with body-image issues. Zuckerberg looked on, as Lanier peppered him with questions about how and why a girl under the age of 13, Meta's minimum age to create an account, was able to post to the app so obsessively.

In his closing argument, Lanier drew the jury's attention to internal documents showing how top officials at Meta and Google were aware of how its products were causing harm to young people.

"I don't naysay the opportunity to make money," Lanier said. "But when you're making money off of kids, you have to do it responsibly.

NPR's Shannon Bond contributed to this report.

A large plume of white smoke billowed out of a cold storage facility on Friday afternoon, two days after the fire first ignited at the Boyle Heights warehouse.

"Due to an expected change in wind conditions, there was a flare-up inside the structure, which was anticipated by crews on scene," the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement. "More smoke is currently visible in the area of this incident; however, there is no additional hazard. Crews will continue to flow large amounts of water into the building for an extended period of time."

LAFD Chief Nick Ferrari later told reporters that the fire had burned through the roof, letting up gases and smoke. That cleared some of the interior of the building, allowing firefighters more visibility into conditions inside.

“This is going to be an extended event,” he said. “We have made great progress, just today alone.”

What residents are experiencing

Residents near the facility on South Los Palos Street reported a strong smell as they watched the smoke rise up, and vehicles driving in that direction turned around as it appeared that the fire flared up shortly before 5 p.m.

Gabriela Dueñas lives less than a mile from the warehouse and put on a mask while she sheltered indoors at her home.

“It smells horrible outside. More ashes are falling now. Seems like the fire is inside the structure now,” Dueñas said just before 5 p.m. on Friday.

Firefighters were at the scene dousing the building. The smoke shifted from black to white before turning black again within an hour. LAFD spokesperson Lyndsey Lantz said that the white smoke was a sign that firefighters were getting water on the flames, and brown smoke likely meant that materials were burning.

“We want to assure people that we expected that change due to the wind,” Lantz said. “Our crews were prepared for that.”

A thick cloud of smoke descends over a street near a cold storage warehouse after a reported flare-up.

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Dueñas said it was frustrating to learn that firefighters anticipated those changes, saying residents were not adequately informed ahead of time.

“Why isn’t LAFD using their social media platforms to provide updates to residents?” she asked. “Instead, we begin to panic when we see the sun covered with a black cloud of smoke.”

Will residents need to shelter in place?

LAFD does not expect a shelter-in-place will be put into effect, Lantz said.

A previous shelter-in-place order was triggered as fire reached an ammonia line. Since then, Ferrari said, the building operator was able to pull ammonia out of the facility’s tanks and transport the chemical off-site. The operator also filled a generator, allowing the building’s interior sprinkler system to keep running, he said.

Ferrari stressed the unusual nature of the fire, and the aggressive tactics that firefighters were using. Helicopter water drops — almost unheard of for a structure fire — continued on Friday. Firefighters were also able to retrieve a number of forklifts with lithium-ion batteries from inside the building, lessening the hazard that the batteries posed. Some remained inside, Ferrari added, but they were in a portion of the building uninvolved in the fire.

The fire broke out Wednesday, prompting an hours-long shelter-in-place order due to hazardous materials, including ammonia.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District on Friday extended a particle pollution advisory to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, and a smoke advisory remains in effect in a zone near the fire.

Early monitoring showed particles were generally present at background levels, AQMD said, but for several seconds at a time, they found increased levels of bromine and chlorine.

“Bromine and chlorine are typically found at trace levels during structural fires and the levels seen were below short-term health-based exposure thresholds,” AQMD said. “Concentrations below this level are not expected to cause adverse health effects. No significant levels of air toxic metals were seen.”

What the city's leaders say

Mayor Karen Bass spoke outside the building Friday evening, praising firefighters’ efforts. She added that people in the area could expect to continue to see smoke, and she urged people and their pets to stay inside as much as possible. She asked people to wear masks when they needed to go outside.

“We know that this is concerning. This is inconvenient, but we are doing everything we can to end this as soon as possible,” she said. “And we want everyone to be safe in the meantime.”

The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks opened the Pecan Recreation Center, 145 S. Pecan St., as a smoke relief center on Friday, and it will stay open overnight and as long as it is needed. Community groups, including Proyecto Pastoral, Running Mamis and Centro CSO, went door to door distributing masks, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said.

Jurado thanked the community for stepping up, allowing fire officials to focus their efforts on extinguishing the fire. She added the Eastside deserved great fire service just as much as Westside neighborhoods.

“This has been a resilient community that has faced history of environmental pollution, and with no recourse,” she said. “This city needed to show decisive action.”

SEATTLE — For days, questions about the health of star winger Christian Pulisic's left calf had loomed large over the U.S. men's national soccer team: After being kicked in the leg during last week's Paraguay game, would he be available in the pivotal second U.S. game of the FIFA World Cup?

In the end, it didn't matter.

The U.S. dominated Friday's match against Australia, winning 2-0 even as Pulisic, who was ultimately deemed unavailable before kickoff, watched his teammates from the sidelines.

The scoring started early when American striker Folarin Balogun streaked down the left side of the field and powered a pass into the penalty area, where Australian defender Cameron Burgess booted it into his net for an own goal in the 11th minute.

"I want to be dangerous. I want to create opportunities. And it might not always be myself that scores, but if I can force an error that gives us the lead, for me that's like a goal as well," Balogun said. "It was a special start to the game to give us the momentum, and then I think we carried it out."

The U.S. added a second goal when defender Alex Freeman knocked in a header just before halftime. The chippy match resulted in seven total yellow cards, three for the U.S. on defenders Antonee Robinson and Chris Richards and Balogun.

After the game, U.S. head coach Mauricio Pochettino praised his team and their approach. "We build the victory in our attitude," he said.

The win guarantees that the U.S. will advance to the knockout stage of the tournament, and it puts the Americans in the driver's seat to win Group D. That would set up the team for a more advantageous path through the knockout round, which begins Sunday, June 28.

Cristian Volpato #20 of Australia and Weston McKennie #8 of the United States battle for the ball during the team's World Cup Group D match on Friday in Seattle.

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About 90 minutes before kickoff, Pochettino told Fox that Pulisic would be unavailable due to the nagging left calf injury suffered last Friday. "It is hoped, as soon as possible, [that he] can be ready to be selected again to be part of the team," Pochettino said.

In his place, forward Ricardo Pepi made the start on the left side. For Freeman, his first career World Cup goal was the latest step in a remarkable trajectory for a 21-year-old player who made his first appearance for the U.S. national team just over a year ago. 

It was unclear whether Pulisic would be available for the third and final U.S. group stage game, a match against Turkey set for next Thursday.

Whether that game will matter depends on the outcome of Friday night's Turkey-Paraguay matchup; if Turkey draws or loses, the U.S. is guaranteed the top spot. If Turkey wins, that sets up next week's head-to-head game to determine the group winner.

Turkey, whose roster features stars like Arda Güler of Real Madrid and Kenan Yıldız of Juventus, had been considered by some analysts to be the strongest team in the group.

The U.S. victory over Australia was the second win in the group stage — the first time the American men have done that in a World Cup since 1930.
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Bernard Brown grew up going to parties all around Los Angeles. Maybe a little before he was supposed to.

“I won't say my age. I don't wanna get nobody in trouble,” he joked. “But I went to clubs like The Catch — The Catch One — and The Study on Hollywood and Western and places like that that are no longer with us.”

Brown went on to become a contemporary dancer and choreographer, and he remembers watching dancers at Black queer clubs, and the tenderness they had for each other. He told LAist that was exactly what informed his new art installation and dance performance, “Sissies: Something Perfect Between Ourselves,” at the Pieter Performance Space this Juneteenth weekend.

“ I thought a lot about how intergenerational learning was starting to slip away, and what does it mean to learn how to be a Black queer person?” Brown said. “Where are those spaces, and how did I learn how to be this way? And so making this work has been about this labor, this love, this intergenerational learning, and also community.”

What to expect

“Sissies” has two components: an installation on view Friday through Sunday, and a dance performance featuring some of L.A.’s most prominent dancers and voguers this Saturday night at 8:30 p.m.

Rosalie Tucker, director of Pieter Performance Space, said this will look a little different from other dance performances you may have been to.

“The invitation to everyone who is a guest in the show, who has bought a ticket is: Let it go,” she said. “Let yourself be in the club. React. You don't have to be quiet. This isn't a silent setting. This is not a traditional theater setting, and that is intentional.”

That’ll culminate after the performance, when the audience will also be invited to join the dancefloor.

Though the installation is this weekend only, Brown told LAist that once it's over, he hopes to find a permanent home for the archives and exhibits he’s amassed.

The inspiration behind ‘Sissies’

Of course, archival research is a big part of the work. But for Brown, who was actually there at clubs watching vogue practitioners work the dancefloor, the research process looks a little different.

Brown, who teaches dance at UC San Diego, calls the work “autoethnographic” — that is, much of what you’ll see is based on his own experiences and observations over the decades.

“ We're talking about vogue, all of the elements: hand performance, floor performance, catwalk, duckwalk,” Brown said. “All of those things appear in the work, but it's based on the truth and the authenticity of our people.”

The themes in Brown’s work resonated with Tucker, especially in this political moment.

“What we're seeing is our histories being not just erased, but violently erased, excluded and lied about,” she said. “So we really have, I think, a responsibility to the future, to ourselves, to claim the truth of, 'This is what happened then, this is what's happening now.'”

Brown’s collaborators

Los Angeles has a long history of queer Black underground clubs and events, one that continues to this day in parties and warehouses.

“ Bernard has built this with the people who are the Black underground in Los Angeles as well, so it's not just like a theoretical thing,” Tucker said.

The score for the show is by DeFacto X, who co-founded Black Bass Collective, a staple of L.A.’s warehouse scene. Co-creator and visual director Malachi Middleton will also perform in the work. Some of Brown’s dancers have shared stages with people like Beyoncé, but he said they’re all also movers and shakers in their own right.

“They are creating their own work,” Brown said. “They are making spaces where people congregate, and they're doing the Lord's work in that regard, finding their way to the movement of our queer ancestors.”

Though Brown won’t be performing in the show, he said he gets emotional when he sees younger generations go through the same movements as the voguers and other dancers he saw in clubs decades ago.

“I am filled with joy — literal joy — and sometimes tears at how beautiful it is to see Black queer men being together intimately, folding into each other, their individual kikis and lala's that happen during performance, the authenticity of their visceral connection to each other,” he said.

LOS ANGELES — James Burrows, who helped create volumes of laughter as director of more than a thousand episodes of such classic television comedies as "Cheers," "Taxi," "Friends" and "Will and Grace," died Friday. He was 85.

His family confirmed his death in a statement to People, saying he "passed away peacefully today surrounded by his family." No location or cause of death was provided.

Burrows spent his career behind the camera specializing in situation comedies. Few viewers recognized him or knew his name, other than to see it flash quickly on the screen in the opening credits. But they knew his work.

Burrows got his start in television relatively late at age 35 in 1974, directing episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show," and "Laverne & Shirley."

He co-created "Cheers," directing 243 of the 273 episodes, as well as all 246 episodes of "Will and Grace."

He also helmed multiple episodes of such hits as "Frasier," "Friends" and "Mike & Molly," and the pilots of "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory."

"When I direct a television show, I try to reach that sweet spot where the best script meets the best performance and the best chemistry between performers," Burrows wrote in his 2022 memoir "Directed by James Burrows." "Hitting that exact moment, where these factors land in combination, results in the sweetest and most enduring laugh."

His family said, "Burrows understood that great comedy was never simply about laughter. It was about humanity, connection, and truth. That understanding became the foundation of a career that forever changed television.

"But beyond his remarkable achievements, Burrows will be remembered for something even greater: his kindness, generosity, and unwavering belief in the people around him. He possessed a rare ability to make everyone better and was known for remembering every person he met by name, making colleagues at every level feel seen, valued, and appreciated," the family statement said.

Born James Edward Burrows on Dec. 30, 1940, in Los Angeles, he moved to New York when he was 5 years old. He spent five years in the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus until his voice started to change. He attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art.

His father was writer, director and producer Abe Burrows, whose Broadway hits included "Guys and Dolls" and "Can-Can." The elder Burrows also mentored Larry Gelbart, future creator and producer of the TV show "M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H."

The younger Burrows spent hours of his youth in theaters and studios watching his father work, dining with him at such famed New York haunts as Sardi's and Gallagher's and meeting celebrities who attended his father's New Year's Eve parties.

After earning a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, Burrows attended the graduate program of the Yale School of Drama, where his classmates included actor-comedian Robert Klein, playwright John Guare and film director John Badham.

At Yale, he was required to take directing classes and he got hooked.

Burrows' first sitcom experience was as Burl Ives' dialogue coach on "O.K. Crackerby!" which was directed by his father and ran for one season on ABC in 1965.

From there, he was an assistant on "The Patty Duke Show." He moved back to New York and worked for Broadway producers Lee Guber, Frank Ford and Shelly Gross. He first met actor Moore while working on the Broadway production of "Holly Golightly," an adaptation of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" that was directed by his father.

Burrows eventually worked as a stage manager for various road productions, where he met such actors as Hugh O'Brien, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Julie Harris.

By 1974, after working in dinner theater and summer stock, he turned on his television and saw Moore's eponymous TV show. He wrote her a letter asking if there was any opening "small or smaller" at her production company that he could fill, according to his memoir.

Moore's husband and business partner, Grant Tinker, invited Burrows to Los Angeles to direct an episode of the comedy. He apprenticed for MTM Enterprises, which had four sitcoms on the air at the same time.

Burrows cited his theater background for learning how to give actors direction and block out scenes. He's credited for being one of the first sitcom directors to increase the typical multi-camera television shoot from three to four cameras.

The common thread between Burrows' shows were the bonds between friends and unrelated families, whether it was the motley crew of regulars meeting at the bar in "Cheers" or the drivers working toward a better life in "Taxi" or the 20-somethings sharing the same apartment building in "Friends."

"The best sitcoms transcend the screen and reach out and grab the audience by the throat and by the heart," Burrows wrote in his memoir.

He relished discovering new acting talent while directing more than 75 pilots that were picked up as series.

"Having directed over a thousand shows means that almost any night you can turn on your television or go online and find a show that I directed. I'm very proud of that," he wrote in his memoir.

In 2019, Burrows was an executive producer on live productions of "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" with famous actors re-creating episodes of those 1970s comedies.

Burrows was married in 1997 to Debbie Easton, whom he met when she worked as a hairstylist on "Frasier." Daughters Kat Schatzow, Ellie Gluck and Maggie Burrows, who followed her father into directing, are from his first marriage to Linda Solomon, who died in 2004. His stepdaughter Paris is from his wife's previous marriage. He has a sister, Laurie Burrows Grad, and seven grandchildren.
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