Plaintiff, Bryce Martinez, recently sought to amend his Complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Previously, having thrown out Plaintiff’s Complaint for failure to state a claim, the Martinez Court re-considered the validity of suing multiple companies for harm resulting from consuming different Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs). In Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Co., Inc., No. 2:25-CV-00377, 2026 WL 1878602 (E.D. Pa. June 30, 2026), Plaintiff sued multiple major food companies, alleging they failed to warn customers of the known risks of UPFs and produced unreasonably dangerous food products. Specifically, Plaintiff claimed that UPFs caused him to develop Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) at sixteen years old. The Martinez Court was not convinced.
In support of his claim, Plaintiff explained that he “was first diagnosed with T2D and NAFLD at 16 years old after having regularly consumed 179 UPFs made by Defendants between 2009 and 2021.” He also alleged that UPFs are inherently defective and dangerous. Plaintiff identified 179 different products that contain varying harmful substances. He proffered similar allegations purporting to establish causation for each product. Plaintiff alleged that UPFs are intentionally engineered to be overconsumed, addictive, and marketed to children, analogizing them to tobacco companies.
The Martinez Court reasoned that UPFs are not a regulated class of products within the law and, therefore, Plaintiff must show that these producers caused the harm alleged. The Court discussed this challenge to Plaintiff, as he “casts a wide net in seeking to hold numerous food producers liable for illnesses resulting from his consumption of nearly two hundred products over the course of multiple years.” Martinez, at 8. The Martinez Court pointed out that courts in Pennsylvania have not recognized an industry-wide liability for plaintiffs in these circumstances, which is limited to “when an injury is caused by one of several known manufacturers, where the precise manufacturer is unidentified and where the manufacturers together adhere to an unreasonable safety standard regarding their product.” Id. (citing Cummins v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 495 A.2d 963, 970 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1985)).
When determining if Plaintiff had properly stated a claim, the Court looked to Phillips v. Cnty. of Allegheny, 515 F.3d 224, 231–32 (3d Cir. 2008), which held that a plaintiff’s factual allegations must raise a right of relief above a speculative level. A plaintiff cannot just formulaically lay out the elements of a case.
Ultimately, the Martinez Court concluded that Plaintiff failed to establish specific causation because he could not show with the requisite particularity that any particular product, from any particular defendant, caused his diagnosis. Additionally, the Court found that Plaintiff’s argument that “childhood T2D and NAFLD began appearing in recorded history around the same time that UPFs hit the market” only points to correlation, not causation. Martinez, at 12.
Further, the Martinez Court was not persuaded by Plaintiff’s attempt to draw comparisons to Gray v. Abbott Lab’ys, No. 10 cv 6377, 2011 WL 3022274 (N.D. Ill. July 22, 2011). In Gray, infants immediately became ill after consuming formula, produced by the same defendant, at the same time, which was recalled due to insect contamination; thus, it was the immediacy of the resultant harm and the uniformity of the production and identity of the defendant that satisfied Northern District of Illinois regarding the plausibility of causation. Here, the Martinez Court distinguished Plaintiff’s claims from Gray because Plaintiff consumed multiple products from different companies over the course of twelve years; there was no uniformity in source of the product and no immediacy of harm.
Lastly, the Martinez Court determined that there was no applicable theory of liability, including the alternative joint liability doctrine, which only applies when multiple actors engage in tortious behavior, harm is caused by only one, and it is impossible to tell which party is responsible. Martinez, at 13. Plaintiff’s case was distinguished from Snoparsky v. Baer, 266 A.2d 707 (Pa. 1970), because, in Snoparsky, there was no question as to the cause or extent of the resulting harm when the plaintiff was struck by an identified projectile. This, however, “is not the case in injuries like those experienced by [Plaintiff] Martinez, where the harm is cumulative and slow to be identified.” Martinez, at 14. Plaintiff’s claim also failed under a market share theory of liability because “each of Defendants’ products is different from the other in multiple ways, including that they contain different allegedly harmful chemicals.” Id., at 17.
In products liability cases in Pennsylvania, the Martinez decision re-emphasizes that there must be sufficient evidence to show that each defendant caused or contributed to the harm. Id. As the Martinez Court concluded, removing one defendant or one product would not change the outcome, and thus illustrates the deficiencies of Plaintiff’s claim. Id. No matter how creative or novel a claim is, it will not be spared from the basic elements of tort. While a suggestion of correlation may show that harm is plausible, it does not necessarily flow that the harm demonstrated is actually beyond a speculative level; but-for cause is not speculative, rather it is a resolute and a cornerstone of tort law.
The Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Co., Inc. decision can be found here.
For additional questions, please contact Jack A. Abdalla, Esq. and/or Conrad James Benedetto, Esq.
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