Welcome to Law.com Class Actions: Critical Mass, a weekly briefing for class action and mass tort attorneys. This week: A Florida judge declared a mistrial in a high-profile opioid case against Walgreens, Walmart and CVS, one day after she dismissed a juror who had alleged misconduct. Plaintiffs’ lawyers Mikal Watts and Mark Lanier are in the unusual situation of opposing each other in the lawsuits against Camp Mystic over this summer’s flood deaths. Find out who got appointed to lead data breach class actions against Coinbase. I’m Amanda Bronstad. Feel free to reach out to me with your input. My email is amanda.bronstad@alm.com. Follow me on LinkedIn or X: @abronstadlaw. Warren T. Burns of Burns Charest. Courtesy photo; Opioid Trial Deadlocked After Juror Alleged Misconduct, Then Got Dismissed

A Florida judge declared a mistrial on Monday in a lengthy and high-profile trial accusing Walmart, Walgreens and CVS of flooding several counties with opioid prescriptions. Jurors had sent a note to Broward County Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips saying they were deadlocked a second time on the 14th day of deliberations, prompting the dismissal. More than a dozen hospitals had sought up to $1.5 billion at the end of the 51-day trial. The jury, which began deliberations on Nov. 14, sent multiple notes, first indicating they were deadlocked on Dec. 4. Deliberations took a decidedly bizarre turn: On Dec. 5, one juror sent a note accusing another of bullying, offensive comments and talking with defense attorneys in the men’s bathroom. The note, titled “Formal Statement of Juror Misconduct,” also said the other juror had “grabbed and hugged me without my consent” and had not considered the evidence with an open mind and openly stated he was not following the legal instructions. After hearing heated arguments from the lawyers, Phillips interviewed the juror. But, by the end of the day, she dismissed the juror, who hadn’t actually witnessed the bathroom conversations and whose other accusations were taken out of context. “Her responses were all over the place,” Phillips explained on Monday, according to Courtroom View Network. “As we went through the document itself, it appeared that almost everything generated in this document was not credible.” On Monday morning, the judge declined to dismiss the accused juror, who remained in deliberations. Warren Burns (Burns Charest), who represented the hospitals, insisted he would ask for a new trial date in 2026. As to the dismissed juror, whose use of Google AI assistant Gemini to write her note had been cited by defense counsel to challenge her credibility, Burns told me it won’t be the last time a jury could turn to artificial intelligence to write a note: “Put yourself in the juror’s shoes: Lay juror, not familiar with the legal process, wants to write something serious. It’s 2025. A lot of people turn to tools like Gemini to help them draft something, so she testified she relayed what she wanted to while speaking into her phone. Produced a draft, she transferred it to a computer and printed it." Mikal Watts (left) of Watts Law Firm and Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm. Courtesy photos Lanier and Watts on Texas Flood Deaths: ‘On This, We See it Differently’

Two titans of the plaintiffs’ bar, Mark Lanier (Lanier Law Firm) and Mikal Watts (Watts Law Firm), are faced off against one another in the lawsuits over the flood deaths of 20 girls this summer who attended Camp Mystic. Here’s my report on the unusual matchup of two lawyers who have spent decades pursuing litigation against companies like Johnson & Johnson and PG&E. They’ve previously teamed together representing Texas counties in the opioid litigation, and, more recently, are together pursuing lawsuits alleging prenatal use of acetaminophen, like Tylenol, causes autism. This time, however, Lanier has sued Camp Mystic on behalf of the families of six girls who died in the July 4 floods, insisting the owners failed to have an adequate emergency plan and were saving their lawn equipment and canoes before evacuating the girls, some as young as 8. Watts, who has a ranch eight miles from the flooding, is defending the camp pro bono, insisting that the fault lies entirely with the state of Texas, whose legislators failed to approve $5 million to install a flood emergency system along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County. Despite their differences, Watts and Lanier consider each other friends. “Oh, I had hair when I first met Mark,” Watts told me. Lanier, who once judged Watts’ high school debate team, said, “I respect and appreciate Mikal. But on this, we see it very differently.” Tina Wolfson, with Ahdoot & Wolfson. Courtesy photo Who Got the Work? A federal judge in New York’s Southern District appointed three plaintiffs’ firms to lead 20 lawsuits over Coinbase’s data breach. In a Dec. 4 order, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos appointed Greenbaum Olbrantz, Freedman Normand Friedland and Ahdoot & Wolfson as interim co-lead counsel. The order referenced Tina Wolfson (Ahdoot & Wolfson), leading numerous data privacy cases, Freedman Normand’s lawyers have represented plaintiffs involving cryptocurrency, and the substantial work all three firms already have done in the multidistrict litigation. Here’s what else is happening: Hellhole Hitlist: Los Angeles topped the American Tort Reform Association’s annual “Judicial Hellholes” list after a jury hit Johnson & Johnson with a $966 million talc verdict. The report also cited a $50 million verdict against Starbucks on behalf of a delivery driver who was burned by hot tea in the drive-thru, and racketeering lawsuits filed by Uber and Ford against several plaintiffs’ attorneys in Southern California. New York City, at No. 2, was a “hot spot for unsupported, exaggerated, and suspicious lawsuits,” the report said, while Texas, which saw verdicts of $831 million and $640 million this year, and whose attorney general has sued Kenvue over Tylenol’s alleged link to autism, was a venue to watch. Benicar Battle: Nagel Rice has filed malpractice suits against Robins Kaplan and Pendley Baudin & Coffin, challenging their attorney fees in the Benicar multidistrict litigation, in which they served on the plaintiffs’ executive committee. The suits, filed by Bruce Nagel (Nagel Rice) in New Jersey’s Camden County Superior Court, allege Tara Sutton (Robins Kaplan) and Christopher Coffin (Pendley Baudin) charged a full 40% contingency fee, in violation of New Jersey’s contingency fee rules, while failing to disclose to their clients the compensation they received from the $34 million common benefit fund. Nagel Rice filed similar suits against Adam Slater (Mazie Slater), who also was on the Benicar committee. Meta Appeal: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court heard Dec. 5 oral arguments in a case alleging that Meta Platforms’ Instagram causes addiction in adolescents. Meta filed an interlocutory appeal of a 2024 decision by Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp denying dismissal of the case, brought by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. Mark Mosier (Covington) argued that Meta was engaged in traditional publishing features protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and First Amendment, while Massachusetts Solicitor David Kravitz argued that the features at issue are not third-party content. Thanks for reading Critical Mass! I’ll be back next week.