Author: Errica Jensen

Laura Marquez-Garrett, a lawyer in a northwest Washington, D.C. law office, has been accumulating a caseload that would have seemed unreal a short while ago. The cases are similar in that they involve a child, a chatbot, a spiral, and a family who is left wondering how a piece of software got close enough to their child to cause their death. The same few businesses are consistently mentioned in the responses. Additionally, a question that American product liability law has never had to address before is being raised by the lawsuits that are currently piling up in several states and…

A brief audio clip started making the rounds on social media in and around Pikesville, Maryland, on a January morning in 2024. Pikesville is a quiet, leafy suburb northwest of Baltimore that has a sizable Black population that has lived there for a long time as well as one of the state’s largest Jewish communities. It sounded as though it had been recorded in secret. The voice in it sounded like a school principal showing disdain for his own pupils, calling Black children lazy and denigrating members of the Jewish community. The words cut so sharply that people shared them…

On the morning of June 23, 2024, Excelsior Orthopaedics’ IT staff discovered a problem with their network somewhere in Western New York. The term “unusual activity” has become a somber euphemism in 2024 for what is nearly always an ongoing ransomware attack. They hired an outside cybersecurity company. They looked into it. Approximately 389,000 people, both current and former patients, had their most private information entrusted to strangers when the extent of what had transpired became apparent. Their records were sitting quietly in databases they had no reason to think about. The attack has been attributed to the ransomware group…

A lawsuit is being heard in a federal courtroom in San Jose, California, to decide whether artificial intelligence companies creating products valued at billions of dollars can use the creative work of millions of people without their consent, payment, or repercussions. The music publishers who brought this lawsuit are aware of this. Anthropic is aware of this. Observing from a safe distance, the larger technology sector most likely knows it as well. In 2023, Anthropic was sued by Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO for allegedly training its AI chatbot Claude on lyrics from at least 500 copyrighted…

The same section of the Higher Education Act that their predecessors ignored for decades is most likely being reviewed by attorneys somewhere in a conference room at a regional accrediting body. The purpose of the statute, particularly §1099b, is to maintain a distance between the federal government and the organizations that determine which colleges and universities are eligible for federal student aid. After a Republican senator from Tennessee spent years fearing that Washington would try to use accreditors as political tools, it was written with purpose. It looks like that day might have come. In April 2025, President Trump issued…

The idea of a Christian Dior customer receiving a data breach notification letter in the mail after spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a perfume, purse, or pair of shoes bearing one of the most well-known luxury brands in the world is quite disconcerting. Unlike the tissue-lined boxes and embossed bags associated with Dior’s boutiques on Rodeo Drive or Avenue Montaigne in Paris, the envelope arrives looking unremarkable and functional. A letter outlining how an unauthorized person gained access to a database holding their personal data in January 2025 was found inside. Name. Address. birthdate. and Social Security…

A mother is opening a check for more than eight thousand dollars somewhere in a suburban Tennessee gym. She bought uniform after uniform, drove her daughter to weekend competitions across the nation for years, and paid camp registration fees that never seemed to go down no matter how many seasons went by. She most likely thought the costs were the same as those of competitive cheerleading. A federal court in the Western District of Tennessee found that Varsity Brands chose to charge the prices because it had the freedom to do so for years. Cheerleading families in 35 states have…

Alec Bohm hit a home run off Nathan Eovaldi in the fifth inning on the afternoon of Opening Day 2026 at Citizens Bank Park in front of a packed Philadelphia crowd, helping the Phillies defeat the Texas Rangers to start the season. It was precisely the kind of performance that a player with a $10.2 million contract year must have. It would have been impossible for spectators to know that the previous evening, his attorneys had filed a lawsuit in a Philadelphia courtroom, not against his employer or a rival team, but against his own parents. Daniel and Lisa Bohm…

On the afternoon of March 25, 2026, outside Los Angeles Superior Court, something happened that Silicon Valley had spent years and considerable legal resources trying to prevent. A group of parents sobbed as they hugged each other in the sunlight. Some had lost children to suicide, while others were witnessing their children battle anxiety, depression, and body image issues that they directly linked to social media. The jury had returned. YouTube and Meta were accountable. Six million dollars was the amount of damages. Additionally, a jury determined that a social media platform ought to be handled like a defective product…

Entering the Boxer Wachler Vision Institute in Beverly Hills is like entering a high-end, light-filled medical facility that appears to be more intended for Instagram than for patient consultations. It’s the kind of place where the branding is clear, the walls are spotless, and the doctor’s name is written so clearly that it’s obvious who built it. For the most part, Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler’s public persona, which combines elements of cutting-edge surgery and social media personality, has been incredibly successful. He debunks health myths on TikTok, where he has over 3.4 million followers. His approachable and informal persona has…