Attorney’s for Meta are taking aim at the $3.7 billion that New Mexico is seeking in phase 2 of the trial against the social media giant, saying the state is simply trying to fund their statewide Mental health system for the next 15 years
David Ackerman, of the New Mexico Attorney General’s office, said that Meta must pay for the harm they caused to users in the state, saying an expert has created an abatement plan to do it, and another expert figured out how much it would all cost.
What’s interesting here is the state’s expert witness, who put together the plan on how to ‘fix’ the harms that were allegedly caused by Meta – works in the office of Illinois governor JB Pritzker.
The woman who decided that the abatement plan will cost nearly $4billion over the next 15 years, previously served as a research professor at The University of New Mexico
But Meta’s Alex Parkinson detailed the plan that New Mexico has in place to fix the harm that was caused, saying its unprecedented and not supported by law.
Parkinson says what the state is demanding is not abatement- its monetary damages masquerading as something else.
He said the money will finance 15 years of statewide mental healthcare in New Mexico including building facilities, flying out and hiring thousands of doctors, spending $100 million on advertising, and even paying for vans to transport patients and doctors.
So basically New Mexico wants Meta to fund the massive expansion of their mental health services sector over the next 15 years – at wildly inflated costs to treat any mental health disorder whether its related to Facebook or not .
Furthermore, Parkinson says that the state is blaming Meta for issues that were around before social media, and is targeting the platform even though there are multiple other social media platforms.
Parkinson said that the state has admitted, and their witness experts testified that there are numerous other factors of causation when it comes to mental health issues in minors, and that social media could be a contributing factor but is not the factor – so Meta shouldn’t have to be responsible for the entire pot of damages.
