COLUMN-Old laws, new tech: The massive litigation poised to define 2026

By Jenna Greene

Jan 5(Reuters) - Looking ahead to some of the biggest lawsuits of 2026, one theme stands out: the law is racing to catch up with technology.

High-stakes disputes involving artificial intelligence, antitrust, privacy, social media and more are poised to shape the litigation landscape in the year ahead, offering a legal stress test for the digital age.

The cases I’m following include litigation over software pricing algorithms. Class-actions have already been brought against landlords that use the AI-driven tools to help set apartment rents, hotel operators to decide room rates and healthcare insurers to determine out-of-network reimbursements.

Antitrust concerns may arise if the software "suggests prices based on the non-public information of competitors" that also use the platform, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom antitrust partner Karen Lent, who has represented defendants facing such allegations, told me.

Could that be considered illegal per se, akin to industry titans meeting in a smoke-filled room to fix prices?

The question looms large in a potential test case in Seattle federal court, where apartment renters filed a proposed class-action against major property management companies and software maker Yardi Systems in 2023. The plaintiffs allege the landlords colluded to set rents on millions of apartments across the country through Yardi's automated pricing software.

In a pending motion for summary judgment, Yardi denies the allegations. The company’s outside counsel, Debevoise & Plimpton partner Maura Monaghan, told me Yardi software only utilizes “the client’s own data and publicly available information.”

Artificial intelligence-related litigation is heating up on other fronts as well, said Gregory Ewing, a data privacy and cybersecurity partner at Dickinson Wright. He flags dozens of still-unresolved suits against major tech companies over what constitutes fair use of copyrighted materials in training AI models.

Judges nationwide are considering when such use of materials creates new, transformative content that doesn’t diminish the market for the original work.

My watch list includes a class action brought in San Francisco federal court by anonymous software coders against GitHub, Microsoft (which bought GitHub in 2018), and OpenAI. Seeking billions in penalties, the plaintiffs allege the companies copied their computer code to train the AI-powered assistant Copilot.

After a lower court judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims at the heart of the case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an interlocutory appeal, with oral arguments set for Feb. 11.

A GitHub spokesperson said Copilot “adheres to applicable laws.” Microsoft declined comment and an OpenAI spokesperson said the claims are without merit.

Massive penalties are also on the line in litigation brought under the California Invasion of Privacy Act, in which plaintiffs allege consumer tech companies' online tracking tools violate their privacy. The challenge, Mayer Brown litigation partner John Nadolenco noted, is how to apply the 1967 wiretapping law to modern website tools.

For example, Meta has been hit with lawsuits under the California privacy law and other consumer protection statutes involving its “Pixel” — a snippet of code that allows companies to track visitor activity online.

As I previously wrote, a San Francisco federal jury in August found Meta liable for violating the privacy of users of the fertility tracking app Flo.

The crucial question now is damages. California’s privacy law carries statutory penalties of $5,000 per violation, but it remains unclear how a digital-age violation is defined – is it every time an app user entered data? A decision by U.S. District Judge James Donato is expected in the coming weeks or months.

A Meta spokesperson said, "We disagree with the verdict and believe the plaintiffs’ claims are false.” The company has also said it plans to appeal.

Meta is on the hot seat in other litigation as well along with other online platforms including Snapchat, Google and TikTok in multidistrict personal injury products liability litigation.

The companies face more than 2,000 cases brought by state and local governments, school districts and individuals consolidated before a federal judge in Oakland, California, with about 1,000 other cases in parallel proceedings in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The plaintiffs allege social media addiction has fueled a mental health crisis among minors that can result in eating disorders, depression, and, in some cases, suicide. The first state court jury trial is expected to begin in late January, while the federal bellwether trials are scheduled for June.

Meta said it strongly disagrees with the allegations. A spokesperson for Google, whose parent company Alphabet owns YouTube, said the lawsuits "fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works and the allegations are simply not true." The other defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Similarly, video game makers also face dozens of suits nationwide by plaintiffs who allege the games are designed to cause psychological addiction.

The U.S. Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in mid-December denied a bid to consolidate 39 video game cases, citing fears that the litigation will “grow to encompass a large tangle of defendants and products” and become too unwieldy for an MDL.

Plaintiffs' lawyer Tor Hoerman, who represents clients in both social media and video game cases, said prior litigation against e-cigarette maker Juul Labs set a precedent that addiction is a valid legal injury. The potential impact of the new crop of addiction harm cases “is enormous, of course,” he told me.

In 2026, courts won’t just be deciding who wins or loses these cases and more — they’ll be filling in the legal boundaries of the digital economy, and who pays the price when algorithms, platforms and products cross the line.