Attempt to Amend in the First UPF Personal Injury Suit Fails to Clear Specific Causation Hurdle
On June 30, 2026, Judge Mia Roberts Perez of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied plaintiff Bryce Martinez’s motion for leave to amend his complaint against 11 major food companies, holding that his proposed First Amended Complaint (FAC) failed to cure the primary defect with his original pleading: the failure to plausibly plead a causal link between any defendant’s ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and his alleged injuries.1 The ruling is the second dismissal in the first personal injury suit targeting UPFs, and it sharpens the pleading bar that plaintiffs will need to clear in other pending and future UPF product liability litigation.
As we discussed in a prior Advisory, government-brought cases pose a far greater risk to food companies than personal injury cases such as Martinez, in part because government plaintiffs need not show specific causation. The latest ruling confirms that, at least for now, the specific causation requirement remains the central obstacle for private UPF plaintiffs.
Martinez: Round Two
The court dismissed Martinez’s original complaint in August 2025 for failing to identify the specific products he consumed, when and how he consumed them, and how that consumption caused his type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease diagnoses at age 16. The court described the pleading as a “shotgun approach” that left defendants unable to determine “who is responsible for what.”
Martinez moved for leave to amend in September 2025, attaching a proposed amended complaint that named 179 specific products that the eleven defendants manufacture, and alleged consumption frequencies and product-specific harmful ingredients for each. The defendants opposed the amendment based on undue delay and futility grounds. The court ruled that the amendment would be futile.
The Court’s Analysis
The FAC Did Not Plead Specific, But-For Causation
The court held that allegations of “increased risk,” “biological plausibility,” and ingredient-disease “association” could not establish that any particular product, or any particular defendant’s product, actually caused Martinez’s injuries. Applying the but-for framework under U.S. Supreme Court precedent,2 the court concluded that the plaintiff did not — and likely could not — allege that eliminating any one defendant or product from the FAC would have changed Martinez’s alleged diagnoses — a result that defeated causation. The court also held that Martinez’s allegations connecting the rise of pediatric type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease with the rise of the UPF industry since the 1980s showed correlation, not causation, and that correlation alone cannot satisfy Pennsylvania’s causation requirement. The court further rejected Martinez’s reliance on an unpublished opinion in infant formula litigation,3 where a single recalled, contaminated product caused an infant’s illness almost immediately after consumption, distinguishing those facts from Martinez’s 12-year, 179-product, multi-manufacturer consumption history.
Alternative Liability and Market Share Liability Do Not Fill the Gap
The court also rejected Martinez’s theories of industry-wide liability under both the alternative liability and the market share liability doctrines. Martinez’s alternative liability failed for two reasons. First, the seminal case of Summers v. Tice4 and its Pennsylvania progeny apply where only one of a known group of tortfeasors acting identically indisputably causes a single, identifiable harm. The court found this setting readily distinguishable in this litigation, given the cumulative, decade-plus nature of Martinez’s alleged injuries. Second, under Pennsylvania law,5 alternative liability requires, among other things, that all defendants’ products are identical and share the same defective qualities — a requirement Martinez’s own pleading undercut by identifying different allegedly harmful additives in different products. Market share liability, established by a 1980 California Supreme Court case,6 failed for the same reason: UPFs, as pleaded, are not fungible or chemically identical across manufacturers, and Martinez did not plead that defendants collectively hold a substantial share of the UPF market.
Takeaways for UPF Defendants
First, the specific-causation bar remains a durable defense in personal injury UPF litigation and likely beyond. Even Martinez’s markedly more detailed FAC, which named 179 products and alleged consumption frequencies and allegedly harmful ingredients for each, could not overcome the fundamental problem that generalized “increased risk” language cannot substitute for a plausible, product-specific causal chain. Defendants facing similar multi-product UPF claims should continue to press this deficiency early, including on any renewed motion to dismiss following an amendment.
Second, courts remain reluctant to relax causation standards through industry-wide liability theories absent true product interchangeability. The court’s product-by-product analysis of differing additives and risk profiles is a useful roadmap for defendants confronting alternative liability or market share arguments in other UPF or multi-defendant product liability contexts.
Third, this ruling does not diminish the threat posed by government-actor litigation like California v. Kraft Heinz Co.7 As discussed in our prior Advisory, government plaintiffs proceeding under consumer protection statutes can often rely on general causation and reasonable-consumer deception theories. The dismissal of Martinez may, if anything, increase the relative attractiveness of the government-enforcement path for plaintiffs’ counsel. California v. Kraft Heinz Co. does not yet have a briefing schedule for any pleadings challenges, and it is still too early to tell if government-plaintiff cases will face similar hurdles.
Finally, it remains to be seen how the specific-causation argument will fare in cases alleging fewer products or in other jurisdictions, including in the seven other personal injury UPF cases currently pending.8 Several of those cases, for example, Lawton v. Kraft Heinz, in which the defendants’ motion to dismiss is pending, involve substantially fewer brands than the 179 products cited in Martinez. Plaintiffs may file new cases that are focused on a smaller number of products with more individualized dose-response allegations.
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Arnold & Porter has been tracking these developments and counseling clients on compliance and litigation strategy in the UPF space. Our team is here to help with any questions you may have.
© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2026 All Rights Reserved. This Advisory is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.
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Mem. Op., Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Co., et al., No. 2:25-cv-00377-MRP (E.D. Pa. June 30, 2026), ECF No. 162.
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Bostock v. Clayton Cty., 590 U.S. 644, 656 (2020).
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Gray v. Abbott Labs., No. 10 cv 6377, 2011 WL 3022274 (N.D. Ill. July 22, 2011).
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Summers v. Tice, 199 P.2d 1, 1-2 (Cal. 1948).
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Erlich v. Abbott Labs., 5 Phila. 249, 251 (Phila. Ct. Com. Pls. 1981).
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Sindell v. Abbott Labs., 607 P.2d 924, 937 (Cal. 1980).
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Case No. CGC-25-631189 (Cal Super. Ct. Dec. 2, 2025).
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See Muthusami v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 6:26-cv-00113 (M.D. Fla.); Lawton v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 26-cv-00044 (S.D. Miss.); Sanford v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 7:26-cv-01430 (S.D.N.Y.); Ford v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 3:26-cv-00077 (E.D. Ark.); Kreie v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 1:26-cv-738 (E.D. Wis.); Shabazz v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 515681/2026 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Kings Cty.); Peters v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 26CV006540 (Ga. Super. Ct., Fulton Cty.). An eighth case, Jenkins v. Kraft Heinz, et al., No. 2:26-cv-00115 (E.D. La.), was voluntarily dismissed before any motion practice occurred.
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