The Beagle Blog

Section 230 does not simply say that social media companies can never be sued when a child is harmed while using their platforms. The federal statute generally prevents an online service from being treated as the publisher or speaker of information created by somebody else, which gives platforms powerful protection against claims that depend on third-party posts. The harder question in current child social-media litigation is whether a lawsuit seeks to hold a platform liable

A parent who signed a trampoline-park waiver should not automatically assume that a seriously injured child has no claim. Utah Supreme Court decisions have repeatedly recognized a strong public policy against allowing a parent to prospectively release a minor child’s negligence claim, and Utah’s trampoline-park statute separately imposes specific duties involving industry safety standards, supervision, inspections, warning signs, injury records, emergency preparation, and lia

Children can fall, collide, and get hurt even when responsible adults are watching them. But “kids get hurt” is not a complete answer when a child comes home from daycare with a serious injury, an unexplained injury, or a story that does not match the provider’s account. In Utah, a childcare provider may be responsible when inadequate supervision, unsafe conditions, improper discipline, failure to follow medical or safety procedures, or another unreasonable act or omission ca

Yes. Engagement-based video game design can create product-liability issues when a child suffers a serious, clinically supported injury and the evidence ties that injury to specific design choices, warnings, monetization systems, or age-targeting practices. But these cases are new, technically difficult, and far from settled; a claim is not established merely because a child played for many hours or a parent believes a game was “addictive.” The central legal questions are whe

When a child is sexually abused by an employee or volunteer, the person who committed the abuse may not be the only person whose conduct matters legally. A school, daycare, youth organization, church, residential program, medical facility, sports organization, or other institution may face civil responsibility when its own hiring, retention, training, supervision, reporting, or safety failures helped create the opportunity for abuse or allowed it to continue. Utah law does no

A brain injury can affect a child for much longer than the first weeks or months after an accident, and the full consequences may not be visible when an insurance company wants to evaluate the claim. Children are still developing cognitive, emotional, academic, social, and executive-function skills, so an injury can interfere with abilities that have not yet fully developed. A child may appear to recover physically while problems with attention, memory, judgment, emotional re

Social media platforms can potentially be held responsible when they deliberately use addictive product features that contribute to serious mental-health harm in children. These cases are not merely about objectionable posts or excessive screen time; they may involve platforms engineered to keep minors scrolling, watching, checking notifications, and returning during sleeping hours. Utah has expressly recognized the risks associated with algorithms, autoplay, infinite scrolli