Baby Food Toxic Metal Lawsuits Cleared To Move Forward by Federal Judge

After some aspects of the litigation were dismissed from the Master Complaint, expert discovery on remaining claims involving autism and ADHD from toxic metals in baby food will begin this month.

The U.S. Judge presiding over all toxic baby food lawsuits filed throughout the federal court system has rejected an attempt to have the litigation dismissed. While a few particular claims were cut, the court allowed ADHD and autism lawsuits being pursued by families nationwide to move forward against several popular manufacturers.

Gerber, Nurture, Beech-Nut and the makers of other widely used baby food brands face at least 135 product liability lawsuits brought by families throughout the United States, each raising similar allegations that children developed life-long disabilities like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) due to high levels of toxic heavy metals contained in their baby foods.

The litigation emerged after a U.S. Congressional report was released in April 2021, which found widespread baby food toxic metal contamination. The report warned that many popular products contained more than 91 times the maximum level of arsenic allowed in bottled water, 177 times the allowable levels of lead, 69 times the limits on cadmium and five times the levels of allowable mercury.

A year ago this month, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) established a toxic baby food lawsuit MDL, centralizing the ADHD and autism claims being pursued by families nationwide before U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in the Northern District of California, for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

To streamline the litigation, Judge Corley has allowed plaintiffs to directly file claims with the MDL court, instead of waiting to be transferred from their originating district. This led to the creation of a Master Complaint which summarized all claims common throughout the litigation, and allowed families to adopt specific claims relevant to their child’s injury.

Earlier this year, defendants called for Judge Corley to dismiss the Master Complaint, and thus the litigation. Following a February 27 hearing on the issue, she issued an amended order (PDF) on April 2, agreeing to dismiss some parts of the litigation, but approving the claims to generally move forward.

The decision strikes references to aluminum and contaminated infant formula products from the Master Complaint, but refused to dismiss the complaint as a whole.

This means the court will continue with plans to begin expert discovery this month, and plans for parties to submit proposed deadlines leading up to a five-day hearing on the issue of General Causation that will begin on December 8, 2025.

At those hearings, Judge Corley is expected to evaluate whether expert witnesses proposed by each side on the issue of general causation are offering opinions that are sufficiently sound and grounded in established science, to allow the evidence to be presented to a jury at trial. The next case management conference is scheduled for May 22.

In addition to the federal litigation, there are also a number of baby food toxic metal lawsuits pending in California state court, where it is expected that the first trial may begin sometime in 2025.

While the outcome of that trial will not have any binding impact on other claims, it will be closely watched as any jury payout awarded may influence how much the manufacturers need to pay in autism or ADHD settlements to resolve the litigation.