John Doe
v.
The Chronically Online
79 U.Va 8 (2026)
Berklich, C.J., delivers the opinion of the Court, in which Wu, C.J., Koeppel, Boatright, Lozada, Lawson, Moore, and Vanger J.J. join.
Berklich, C.J., delivers the opinion of the Court.
Before the Court now comes a case about the forbidden fruit: the Apple. More specifically, the MacBook. Plaintiff, identified as John Doe, brings suit against a host of defendants that he calls “The Chronically Online”—those people in class who use their laptops not to take diligent notes, but to scroll “the interwebz” (as the kids are calling it these days). Doe alleges that the Chronically Online are not only hurting their own grades, but those of others by distracting their goldfish-like classmates with the flashing colors on their screen. The Court considers the following question: are distracting laptop users responsible, and ultimately liable for, the poor grades of their peers in class? We rule that they are not.
Facts
Plaintiff is a 2L at the University of Virginia School of Law. While enrolled in Law School, plaintiff participated in the typical 1L-rigimarole of doctrinal classes, grades in which are typically used as the basis for hiring decisions. In these classes, the plaintiff sat next to and behind several of his classmates who had different designs on their use of class time than did the professor. These classmates, identified as the Chronically Online, would spend their eighty minutes online shopping, playing New York Times games or GeoGuesser, texting, scrolling social media, reading movie reviews, setting their fantasy football lineup, shit-talking others’ fantasy football lineups, and generally engaging in any activity that could not be described as taking notes. Plaintiff, caught up in all the fun, would often peek at these laptop screens and, from time to time, lean over to his classmates and talk with them during class. Plaintiff recalls that the topics of conversation were usually about what was happening on his peers’ screens. He and his peers would discuss Wordle guesses, talk-though trades, and compare brands of coffee to buy, among other topics.
Subsequent to his 1L Fall semester, much to his disappointment, plaintiff received below-median grades in all of his classes. He participated in BigLaw recruiting, and though he was hired, achieved a result below his liking. Plaintiff now brings the tort action of nuisance against the Chronically Online, alleging that their screens were distracting, and that his grades suffered because he was not paying attention to the lectures, but to their various internet frivolities.
Discussion:
Private nuisance is a common-law tort claim, in which a substantial, unreasonable, not-necessarily-trespassory action interferes with a person's use and enjoyment of their land. Nuisance, Cornell L. School Legal Info. Inst., https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/nuisance (last visited Oct. 26, 2026). It incorporates the traditional elements of a tort action of duty, breach, causation, and damages.
It is obvious that a classmate has a duty to another classmate not to distract another during class. See, The Hand on Thigh Incident of E-H Contracts, A.N.N.S., J.W.C. (2024). Students should be afforded a typical learning environment where they are free to focus on the professor, and their attention is not forced into a spot where they have pressing concerns.
Whether that duty is breached by an errant flashing laptop is effectively the question at hand. In his brief, plaintiff attempts to cross the streams between private nuisance and attractive nuisance, arguing that the defendant’s computer screens are particularly tantalizing to a law student. United States courts and states have recognized that children are particularly attracted to pools, big open pits, fire, refrigerators, high-voltage power lines, train turntables, and heavy equipment—such that landowners with these objects on their property are liable for not having secured them against children, who, like pet hamsters, are more inclined to death and dismemberment than not.[1] Why children feel affinity towards things likely to kill them is a question this Court will leave to a higher power, and potentially a psychoanalyst and evolutionary biologist.
Plaintiff lowers himself to the level of a child when he argues that there’s something so good about something so bad—the entertainment of the computer screen. Unfortunately, it is reasonably expected that people will be fooling around on their computers during class. This judge recently watched a friend and associate begin the movie Troy (2004, starring Brad Pitt as Achilles), while in the middle of sitting through a lecture on Terry stops (presumably of no consequence to the final exam). Troy, (Warner Bros. Pictures 2004). Defendants argue that, by attending class alone, plaintiff has assumed the risk of being distracted from class, and that in that circumstance the least-cost-avoider is the person who is most able to control their own attention.
The Court is thus invited into a particularly tricky thicket of philosophical intrigue: does plaintiff have a choice to pay attention during class when others distract him? Is it an act of free will to tune back into the explanation of the three-tiered system that is the sharing of nonrecourse partner liabilities under Treasury Regulation § 1.752-3?[2] Or is it an involuntary knee-jerk reaction to lock in on your buddy’s Outlook messages?[3] And how does this square with the previously established duty not to distract? See supra, Thigh Incident.
This ouroboros of analysis will serve only to inflate the word-count of this opinion. We decline to comment on the mystery of free will, but acknowledge that deciding what to pay attention to is hard. Attention follows understanding, and understanding follows attention. A virtuous, or vicious, cycle emerges when students observe the lecture, or their screens, respectively. They get better at whatever they do. The Chronically Online are their own worst enemy, and the court suggests they find something else in Law School worthy of their attention, if they hope to be successfully employed in the long term. The same is true for their hapless classmate, the plaintiff. This quest for meaning is typically one that commences after 1L Fall, with the advent of electives (unless of course you end up wanting to be a torts or contracts practitioner). However, it’s a good lesson in understanding what BigLaw firms select for: the ability to give a shit about stuff nobody else does, or to at least pretend. And, to not be distracted by things other people would think are grievous.[4]
Order:
The Court finds that plaintiff is in fact the least-cost-avoider of his own brain. Judgment is reached in favor of defendants.
[1] See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 339 (Am. L. Inst. 1965); Reynolds v. Willson, 51 Cal. 2d 94, 100–02 (1958) (swimming pool); Long v. Standard Oil Co., 92 Cal. App. 2d 455, 462–66 (1949) (open excavation); Carter v. Skelly Oil Co., 382 P.2d 277, 279–82 (Kan. 1963) (burning oil pit); Fla. Stat. § 823.08 (2026) (abandoned refrigerators); McCoy v. Tex. Power & Light Co., 239 S.W. 1105, 1108–10 (Tex. Comm'n App. 1922, holding approved) (electrical transmission tower); R.R. Co. v. Stout, 84 U.S. (17 Wall.) 657, 660–61 (1873) (railroad turntable); Richardson v. Ham, 44 Cal. 2d 772, 775–77 (1955) (bulldozers—although simply an ordinary negligence case, not attractive nuisance).
[2] David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (2011). Answer: plausibly.
[3] Sorry Jason. See, Jason Vanger, Stop Starting So Many Sentences With Conjunctions, Va. L. Wkly., October 19, 2026, https://www.lawweekly.org/stop-starting-so-many-sentences-with-conjunctions.
[4] u/IllustriousRush8034, Worst thing a partner has done to you, r/biglaw Reddit (August, 2026), https://www.reddit.com/r/biglaw/comments/1vvgsa3/worst_thing_a_partner_has_done_to_you/. (“[S]tapler thrown at head”).