300,000+
Cases Signed.
Real Stories.

The Assignment

In 2019, Anne Andrews approached Jacob Malherbe with a challenge: build a national referral network of law firms capable of identifying and signing opioid victims to file claims in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy proceedings. The window for filing was limited. Thousands of potential victims had no legal representation and didn't know they qualified.

Anne made the goal clear: 10,000 filed claims would be a major success.

The Campaign

MTAA launched nationwide awareness campaigns on Facebook and Instagram informing people about the Purdue bankruptcy and their right to file a claim. A sophisticated intake process connected those affected to legal teams quickly. Over 50 law firms joined the referral network, unified by the mission. Andrews & Thornton handled the legal workup and claim filing while the referral firms ensured intake scalability.

The creative ran in the Harvey register — outrage at the Sackler family and Purdue's deliberate marketing of addictive medication was the dominant emotional signal. The opioid epidemic's emotional register is largely anger, and campaigns that channeled that anger into specific legal action performed substantially better than empathy-forward alternatives.

"It was a wonderful experience to help so many people who had become addicted to opioids. For many, this was a step toward closure." — Jacob Malherbe

Why This Campaign Was Different

Roundup litigation was supposed to settle every year. It didn't. Year after year, no major national settlement came — but MTAA never stopped. The campaign became one of the longest-running and largest single-tort Facebook campaigns in legal advertising history.

"We thought it would settle every year. It just didn't. But we never stopped." — Jacob Malherbe

The Ecosystem

This wasn't about running ads — it was about building an ecosystem. MTAA generated qualified leads. Intakedesk converted them with precision. Howard Kastner, a long-term collaborator, stayed with the vision for over five years. Three separate functions, unified by one mission.

Why Facebook Was Built for This

Roundup validated the original promise of Facebook as a mass tort channel. The platform's algorithmic targeting learned what a Roundup claimant looked like — their demographics, interests, behavior patterns — and scaled to find more. Lookalike audiences built from existing signed claimant data continuously refined targeting. Campaigns in year five dramatically outperformed year one at the same budget level, because five years of signed retainer signals had trained the algorithm on real converters, not form-fillers.

"Sometimes we work for years with no guarantee. But with the right partners and the right platform, you can keep showing up for people who need help — and you can do it at scale." — Jacob Malherbe

The Hardest Audience in Mass Tort Advertising

Unlike most mass tort campaigns, this one required sensitivity above everything else. The victims were mostly men over 40, many of whom had never spoken publicly about abuse they suffered as children. The emotional burden of reliving childhood trauma created major obstacles to engagement. The bankruptcy deadline added urgency.

MTAA faced an unspoken challenge: encouraging tens of thousands of men to share the most painful memories of their lives — not for money, but to protect future generations.

The Creative Strategy

Every message was personalized — not about lawsuits or settlements, but about healing, accountability, and legacy. Ad copy and creatives were carefully tested to strike the exact tone: "It's time to be heard." "You are not alone." "You can help protect future scouts."

The Mae register — empathy, connection, warmth — was the only register that worked for this audience. Harvey (outrage, anger) was inappropriate and was not used. The campaign is a proof point for why MTAA maintains both registers and applies them differently: there is no universal creative approach in mass tort advertising.

The Trigger: A Public Health Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

As a father of three boys, Jacob Malherbe understood firsthand the grip video games can have on children. When he encountered research on addictive game design practices, he immediately drew parallels to the opioid epidemic — another addiction hidden in plain sight, devastating families across the country.

Children with neurological disorders (ADHD, autism, spectrum disorders) are particularly vulnerable to the dopamine spikes engineered into game design. "When we reached 10,000 signed clients, 12% reported a suicide attempt. And that percentage stayed the same as we signed more." — Jacob Malherbe

The Campaign

MTAA launched the Video Game Addiction campaign in December 2024, working through holidays — Christmas Eve until 6pm, New Year's Eve until 8pm — because the need was urgent. Facebook and Instagram ads educated families on the signs of gaming addiction. Intake processes supported parents, many of whom were themselves in crisis.

The campaign has become one of the fastest-scaling mass tort advertising efforts in MTAA's history. The eligible claimant population — 38 million American children who play video games, with 10%+ meeting clinical addiction criteria — dwarfs most pharmaceutical or product liability torts.

The Legal Problem

On October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel onto the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. 60 people were killed and over 400 wounded. Almost every attorney Jacob knew said the same thing: "There's no case here. The law doesn't allow us to help."

How could anyone argue a hotel should have foreseen someone sneaking firearms into a room in ordinary luggage? The traditional liability theory didn't hold.

A Different Theory

Jacob refused to accept the legal theory as the final answer. The victims were mostly local. The casinos were local — deeply tied to the city's reputation. He proposed a theory of community decency rather than strict legal liability: "This won't be about what the law allows. It will be about what decency demands. These casinos will settle — not because they have to, but because they should."

A handful of trusted attorneys followed his lead and launched a grassroots effort to sign up victims with no guarantees.

The Google Alert That Started It

In May 2018, the Los Angeles Times exposed decades of sexual abuse by Dr. George Tyndall, the campus gynecologist at USC. For over 30 years, complaints from students and faculty had been ignored. Jacob Malherbe saw the story through Google Alerts — his standard practice for identifying emerging litigation before any competitor does.

Sexual abuse mass torts were not widely run at the time. Jacob called his attorney partner Darren Miller: "Let's see if women will come forward if we ask."

$37 to First Client

They launched a pilot digital campaign targeting USC alumni and students. With just $37 in initial ad spend, the campaign signed its first client. They scaled immediately. Women began coming forward — quietly at first, then in growing numbers. Other attorneys followed. The silence at USC was broken.

The Setup

In mid-2023, Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone sublingual film) began attracting serious plaintiff attorney interest. The FDA had issued warnings linking the drug's sugar-coated film formulation to severe tooth decay and dental injuries in patients using it for opioid use disorder treatment. An MDL was forming in the Northern District of Ohio — but had not yet attracted the competitive advertising pressure that drives CPL upward.

The question MTAA faced: was Suboxone ready for a serious campaign investment, or was this still early-stage science that would take years to resolve?

The Jacob Score Analysis at Entry

The Decision

A Jacob Score of 42 places Suboxone in the "emerging" category — ground floor economics, genuine litigation trajectory, but no confirmed verdicts and moderate science confidence. The campaign window was open. The FDA causal link was established. The dental injury — visible, documentable, connected to a specific drug — is a strong claimant identification mechanism.

MTAA's recommendation: enter now, before the campaign window becomes crowded. Budget conservatively while testing claimant identification creative and intake qualification rates. This is exactly the entry point where 10 retainers today will cost the same as 3 retainers in 18 months.

Campaign Structure

Creative led with the FDA warning: "The FDA has warned that Suboxone film can cause severe tooth decay." This framing accomplished two things — it gave the claim immediate institutional credibility, and it created a self-identification mechanism. Patients who had used Suboxone and experienced dental problems immediately recognized their experience.

The Harvey register (attorney-forward outrage at Reckitt Benckiser) and Mae register (empathy for patients who were harmed while seeking help for addiction recovery — a uniquely vulnerable population) ran simultaneously. The Mae register significantly outperformed Harvey in this tort, which aligned with demographic analysis: Suboxone users are often in active recovery, and connection energy outperforms confrontation energy for this audience.

CloudIntake qualification criteria: confirmed Suboxone film use (not the tablet), documented dental injuries (loss of teeth, severe decay, major dental procedures required), timeline alignment with usage. Strict intake was maintained because dental injury documentation varies significantly in severity.

What Happened at Month 6

By Q1 2024, CPL had more than doubled. Firms entering Suboxone advertising in Q1 2024 paid twice the price for the same claimant as MTAA's clients who entered in Q3 2023. The campaigns run in the first six months produced retainers at approximately half the cost that latecomers paid. The entry window advantage is not theoretical — it materializes in the cost-per-retainer column.

The Settlement Context (2026)

As of March 2026, Reckitt Benckiser has confirmed a $1.4 billion settlement framework for Suboxone tooth decay claims. This settlement — the largest validation event in the tort's history — has driven a third wave of advertising interest. CPL is now 3–4x the Q3 2023 baseline. Firms that built their dockets in 2023–2024 are in a position to benefit from the settlement resolution. Firms entering now are building at peak cost.

The Challenge: A Claimant Population That Is Everywhere

Social media addiction and youth mental harm is the most demographically diffuse mass tort in current litigation. The eligible population — children and teenagers who developed documented mental health injuries (eating disorders, self-harm, suicidal ideation, anxiety disorders, ADHD) attributable to algorithmic social media exposure — is not concentrated geographically or by product use. Every household with a child who used Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Snapchat is potentially in scope.

This creates a unique advertising challenge. The claimant is almost never the injured party — parents and guardians are the decision-makers. The creative challenge: reach parents of affected children without triggering Meta's policies on targeting based on sensitive personal data, while still producing enough claimant-side recognition to drive conversion.

Qualifying the Right Claimants

Not every child who used social media qualifies. The intake criteria for Social Media Youth Harm requires: age of social media exposure (under 18 at time of use), confirmed documented mental health diagnosis (eating disorder, self-harm history, ADHD, anxiety, depression requiring clinical treatment), physician documentation, and causal timeline alignment between heavy social media use and onset of symptoms.

This qualification bar is strict. MTAA's early research showed that 60–70% of initial leads from broad social media advertising did not meet clinical documentation requirements. The intake system had to be designed to educate prospects about documentation requirements before qualification screening — reducing call center time spent on ineligible claimants and improving lead quality upstream.

The Creative Solution: Parent-Forward Awareness

The most effective Social Media Youth Harm creative MTAA has tested is parent-forward and question-driven — not victim-forward. "Has your child struggled with an eating disorder, self-harm, or anxiety after heavy Instagram or TikTok use?" This framing does several things simultaneously: it identifies the responsible party (the parent), it names the specific platforms, it specifies the injury types, and it invites recognition without asserting a conclusion.

The Mae register dominates this tort. The audience is parents in distress — often parents who feel they failed to protect their children, who are looking for both answers and validation. Harvey (outrage at Meta/TikTok) also works, but often performs better later in the awareness cycle after the prospect has already engaged with educational content. Initial creative is Mae; retargeting creative shifts to Harvey.

The Verdict Inflection Point

The Infrastructure Build

For clients operating in the Social Media Youth Harm MDL, MTAA built the following intake infrastructure stack:

• Pre-screening landing pages — Educational content explaining qualification criteria before intake form submission. Reduces unqualified form completions by 65%+.
• attorney.mtaa.ai — Attorney onboarding portal with AI-generated intake question flows, e-signature for Partner Services Agreement and HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
• compare.mtaa.ai — Internal MTAA tool for analyzing and comparing intake criteria across Social Media co-counsel relationships — identifying intake windows and SOL exposure by state.
• CloudIntake qualification protocol — Trained intake specialists running the Social Media Youth Harm qualification script, with documentation checklists and physician record request guidance.

The Assignment

Anne Andrews and Andrews & Thornton engaged MTAA to generate mass tort claims at scale within the Purdue Pharma opioid bankruptcy proceedings. This was not a standard litigation advertising campaign — it was a bankruptcy claims generation operation with a hard deadline, a specific eligibility population, and a documentation requirement that most opioid-impacted individuals were not accustomed to assembling.

The eligible population: individuals who had been prescribed or used OxyContin or other Purdue opioid products, experienced opioid use disorder, overdose, or other qualifying injuries, and had documentation to establish their claim within the bankruptcy proceeding's proof of claim requirements.

Why This Was Different

Standard mass tort advertising drives claimants to sign contingency fee retainers — the signed retainer is the end product, and case value is determined later in the litigation cycle. Purdue Opioid Bankruptcy was structurally different: claims had to be filed directly with the bankruptcy court, documentation requirements were specific and complex, and the value of each claim was partially determined by documentation quality rather than just eligibility.

This changed the intake design entirely. The goal was not just to identify eligible individuals — it was to identify eligible individuals with sufficient documentation to file a meaningful claim. Intake screening had to include documentation assessment, not just eligibility screening.

The Advertising Strategy

MTAA ran Facebook and Instagram campaigns targeting the demographic most likely to have Purdue opioid exposure: adults 35–65 in geographic areas with documented high opioid prescription rates (Appalachian corridor, rural Midwest, suburban Mid-Atlantic). The creative strategy used the Purdue bankruptcy itself as the credibility anchor — news of the bankruptcy and the Sackler family's liability was widely covered, giving the campaign built-in institutional legitimacy.

The Harvey register (outrage at the Sackler family, outrage at Purdue's deliberate marketing of addictive medication) significantly outperformed the Mae register for this tort. The opioid epidemic's emotional register is largely anger — at pharmaceutical companies, at doctors, at the system that enabled it. Campaigns that channeled that anger into a specific legal action performed substantially better than empathy-forward creative.

Intake Documentation Layer

Unlike a standard mass tort intake, Purdue Opioid Bankruptcy required MTAA's CloudIntake team to implement a documentation pre-screening protocol:

• Confirmation of Purdue opioid product usage (brand name recognition)
• Documentation of prescription or purchase (pharmacy records, medical records, prescriber identity)
• Documentation of qualifying injury (opioid use disorder diagnosis, overdose event, hospitalization)
• Timeline confirmation (usage within the relevant claim period)

Claimants who could confirm all four elements were moved to retainer execution immediately. Those who required documentation retrieval assistance were connected to a medical records retrieval service integrated into the CloudIntake workflow.

Scale and Timeline

The Purdue Pharma bankruptcy proceeding had a hard claims deadline — driving a campaign structure designed for volume and speed rather than cost optimization. MTAA scaled media spend rapidly across the campaign window, prioritizing throughput over CPL minimization. The result was approximately 60,000 filed bankruptcy claims for Andrews & Thornton — making their firm one of the largest individual claim filers in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy proceeding.

Anne Andrews is referenced in MTAA founder Jacob Malherbe's book A Lawyer's Guide to Mass Torts: Establish Your Legacy (2021), which includes a chapter co-authored by Andrews drawing on her experience with mass tort practice development.