There is a theme running through everything I have been working on lately, and I did not plan it that way. It just keeps showing up.
Institutions, platforms, and people with access to information the rest of us don't have... and the question of what happens when they use it. Or abuse it.
This month, we went deep on Big Tech and social media addiction. Juries are now ruling that these platforms were designed to hook your kids. Not accidentally. By design. We talked about the Boy Scouts bankruptcy, where $2.5 billion sounded like justice until you looked at how much the victims are actually receiving out of the $2.5 billion (and currently we are talking about less than 5%). We broke down where mass tort litigation stands in 2026: Roundup, PFAS, Uber—because most people have no idea—most people are confused as to what is going on with their case or the status of the litigation.
And then I wrote something I have been thinking about for a while: prediction markets. Kalshi. The CFTC. The YouTube editor who thought he had a clean trade and ended up with a federal violation on his record. It turns out the app that looks like a sports bet is, under federal law, a derivatives exchange — and insider trading there is just as illegal as it is on Wall Street. Most people using these platforms have no idea. That is a problem.
The throughline in all of it is the same one I have seen in 30 years of practice.
The people who get hurt are almost always the ones who did not know what they were walking into. And the people who caused the harm were counting on exactly that.
That is why this newsletter exists. Let's get into it.
Meta Lawsuit & Social Media Addiction
Meta’s Algorithms Found Harmful to Children
The courts have recognized that these platforms may be engineered for addiction. Steve Smith returns to explain what this landmark verdict means for the future of Big Tech litigation. WATCH HERE →
Mass Tort Update 2026
Survivors Are Still Getting Shortchanged
Attorney Jason Joy and survivor advocate Curtis Garrison expose how the Boy Scouts bankruptcy became a case study in litigation financing gone wrong. WATCH HERE →
Don’t Trust Institutions
The thread connecting nearly every episode this month is the same one I see play out in my own practice every day: institutions — whether it's Meta, Monsanto, or the Boy Scouts -— almost never volunteer accountability. They wait you out. They count on you not knowing your rights, not knowing the deadlines, and not knowing that litigation is even possible.
So here is the tip: if you or someone you love has been harmed... by a product, a platform, or a person in a position of trust... talk to an attorney sooner rather than later.
Statutes of limitations are real, and they are unforgiving. Some states are opening new windows right now for abuse survivors. On PFAS and Roundup, Roundup might be moving toward resolution faster, although rumors of the proposed settlement being challenged continue to pop up.
My biggest recommendation: Check out the 2026 Mass Tort Updates podcast with Steve Smith.
Insider Trading Alert
If you've been on Kalshi or any prediction market app lately, you probably think you're placing a bet. You're not. Under federal law, you're trading on a regulated derivatives exchange, and the same insider trading rules that have taken down energy traders and fuel-hedging managers for the past decade apply to every trade you make.
A YouTube editor just found that out the hard way — he used information from his job to trade on video outcomes he already knew about. The CFTC stepped in, and he's now out $20,000 with a two-year ban.
He's not the only one. A political candidate traded contracts on his own election. Kalshi has referred over a dozen cases to law enforcement in the past year. And the CFTC's Enforcement Director just stood at NYU Law and called prediction market insider trading a top enforcement priority. The first federal criminal case in this space hasn't happened yet, but it's coming. I broke down the full legal landscape... the cases, the statutes, and the circuit split that could land at the Supreme Court — in Law360.
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