Baby Food
Centralized before Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in the Northern District of California in April 2024, the Baby Food litigation consolidates federal claims alleging that heavy metals — lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury — present in commercial baby food products caused autism spectrum disorder and ADHD in children exposed during infancy. With 483 actions pending, this is a docket whose trajectory was significantly affected by a March 2026 ruling in which the court excluded plaintiffs' expert witnesses on general causation connecting heavy-metal exposure to autism and ADHD.
A general-causation expert exclusion of this kind is one of the more consequential rulings a products-liability mass tort can receive, because general causation — whether the substance at issue can cause the injury alleged, as a scientific matter — is typically a threshold question that must be established before individual claims can proceed to litigate their own specific causation and damages. The practical scope of this ruling's effect on the broader docket, including whether it leads to dismissals, an appeal, or an opportunity for plaintiffs to submit new expert evidence, was not established by the ruling itself and should be treated as an open question rather than assumed.
What happens next procedurally — whether plaintiffs pursue an interlocutory appeal, seek to reopen expert discovery with new causation evidence, or the litigation narrows substantially — will be the central determinant of this docket's future resolution path far more than any bellwether or settlement-timing question typical of a docket earlier in its life. Criterica Intelligence's platform tracks causation rulings like this across every active MDL as a leading structural indicator of duration and resolution risk, without asserting whether heavy-metal exposure does or does not cause the alleged conditions.
General causation asks whether a substance can cause the alleged injury as a scientific matter. Excluding plaintiffs' experts on this threshold question is one of the most consequential rulings a mass tort can receive, since it can affect the entire claim pool.
Not necessarily. The ruling's scope and practical effect — including whether plaintiffs appeal or submit new expert evidence — was not established by the ruling itself and remains an open procedural question.
Plaintiffs may pursue an interlocutory appeal, seek to reopen expert discovery with new evidence, or the litigation may narrow substantially, depending on how the court and parties proceed.
No. The platform tracks the ruling as a structural and procedural development affecting the litigation's trajectory — it does not assert a scientific or causation conclusion.
Statistics shown reflect historical or illustrative model outputs derived from real case data. They are not predictions or guarantees of any individual outcome. Litigation results depend on facts, jurisdiction, judge, and counsel, and vary case by case. Model accuracy is subject to selection effects and changing legal dynamics.