Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / The Baby Food MDL Just Collapsed. What Plaintiffs Will Do Next | Tort Talk

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The Baby Food MDL Just Collapsed. What Plaintiffs Will Do Next | Tort Talk · The Jon and Marc Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to Tor Talk. I'm Mark Ryu, joined as always
• 0:03
  by Joe Fantini. John couldn't make it this week
• 0:06
  as he is giving a presentation in Denver.
• 0:09
  We did not kick him out. But we have a.
• 0:11
  Heavy hitting episode today. We are dissecting the
• 0:14
  disappointing Dobbert ruling in the baby food litigation.
• 0:17
  Things are heating up in Week 4, the social media addiction
• 0:20
  trial. We also have a critical update
• 0:22
  on the new P pass order and a massive surge in some Depo
• 0:25
  Provera filings. There's a lot to cover, so let's
• 0:28
  get started today, Joe. Yeah, Mark, excited to get with
• 0:31
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• 0:35
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• 0:56
  You live from the beach because wow, I wish I had days off.
• 1:00
  Mass torts does not take a day off.
• 1:02
  Let's get into it. Heavy metal food.
• 1:04
  Daubert MDL ruling. So a key ruling we've been
• 1:07
  waiting for for a few months finally came down and the
• 1:10
  results aren't great for the plaintiffs.
• 1:12
  What can you tell us about this Dobber opinion and where do we
• 1:15
  go from here? Yeah, definitely a set back for
• 1:18
  the plaintiffs and MDL. Basically the judge in the MDL
• 1:22
  excluded all of our experts except one and really set a high
• 1:26
  standard that we're going to need to be able to revive this
• 1:29
  litigation, at least in the MDL. Basically the judge was saying
• 1:34
  that the studies that are experts relied upon weren't
• 1:38
  really founded in enough scientific evidence.
• 1:42
  And what the judge almost was saying is that we would need to
• 1:45
  conduct studies based upon specific products, so specific
• 1:50
  types of baby foods that then would cause these babies to
• 1:54
  suffer from autism or ADHD, which is a really tough burden
• 1:59
  for us to prove because those type of studies have never been
• 2:03
  done. And then also kind of going
• 2:05
  forward, it's going to be hard maybe in other consumer cases
• 2:08
  where a specific study wasn't done establishing or looking at
• 2:13
  an injury related to a product. How could we then move forward
• 2:17
  with that case? So we lost towards the end of
• 2:19
  2025 in the state court proceedings in California.
• 2:24
  We we've lost here now in the MDL proceedings, so a huge set
• 2:29
  back over on the litigation. The order only applies to the
• 2:33
  couple 100 cases that were pending.
• 2:36
  But we're going to have to regroup and reorganize to come
• 2:39
  forward with another strategy. It could be going into different
• 2:42
  state court plays that have different maybe expert standards
• 2:46
  or adopting some of the suggestions the MDL judge had
• 2:51
  coming forward with our new experts.
• 2:53
  But we'll see how it plays out. Expect to hear an appeal, but
• 2:57
  this litigation doesn't look like it's going to be picking up
• 3:00
  anytime soon in the next couple months.
• 3:02
  That's not great news. So there's one lone survivor
• 3:05
  expert that's left. How many got disqualified, you
• 3:07
  know? I believe it was four other
• 3:09
  experts. So they're different type of
• 3:12
  experts came in, but the epidemiologist is really what we
• 3:16
  needed and that got excluded. Now we want to hear.
• 3:19
  So hopefully we'll have some more updates, some positive
• 3:21
  updates throughout the rest of 2026.
• 3:23
  Moving on to the social media addiction trial, so it's week
• 3:26
  four of the trial, trial also week four of the trial of the
• 3:29
  year and things are heating up. When should we expect this case
• 3:32
  to wrap up? Yeah, we're, we're four weeks
• 3:34
  into the trial. The judge initially said that
• 3:37
  the court wanted the case to be wrapped up within a month.
• 3:40
  So we're expecting to hear closing arguments either at the
• 3:44
  end of this week or the beginning of next week.
• 3:47
  We really heard from all of the key players in this case.
• 3:50
  We gave you updates on Mark Zuckerberg testifying.
• 3:53
  We heard from the plaintiff. We heard from the plaintiff's
• 3:56
  therapist and now we really get a good understanding of the
• 4:00
  defendant's theory. So basically they're saying,
• 4:03
  right, that the mother of the plaintiff kind of encourage or
• 4:07
  cause some of these body issues or mental health issues that the
• 4:12
  plaintiff suffer from, really encouraging her to look a
• 4:15
  certain way where the plaintiffs are coming back and saying, no,
• 4:19
  it was actually these social media platforms.
• 4:22
  I think it came out that the plaintiff in this case started
• 4:25
  using Instagram and YouTube at six years old and was already
• 4:29
  posting pictures about her weight.
• 4:31
  Again, she's a very small woman at the age of 8 or 9 asking for
• 4:36
  input on that. So the theory from the
• 4:39
  defendants is blame the parents, they weren't there, they caused
• 4:43
  the issue. And what we've been saying on
• 4:45
  the plaintiff side is that these platforms can cause addiction.
• 4:48
  They cause the harm. We're acknowledging maybe the
• 4:51
  plaintiff's family life wasn't perfect, nobody's is, but that's
• 4:56
  what didn't cause the addiction. So we'll hear this trial wrap up
• 5:00
  this week, probably have a verdict, I'm thinking midweek
• 5:03
  next week. That'll be a huge decision to
• 5:06
  really springboard this litigation going forward.
• 5:09
  Vacation about 10 days and I hope we have a verdict before I
• 5:12
  do so. Me too.
• 5:13
  It's funny, this is one of those trials where my my wife is
• 5:16
  intently following along and asking me if like insider
• 5:19
  updates. I'm like, I don't have that much
• 5:20
  inside scoop. I have some but I can't tell you
• 5:22
  what's about to happen. No, everybody's definitely
• 5:25
  interested in it. It's more than just the mass
• 5:27
  tort people. This is definitely a mainstream
• 5:30
  issue and it will be followed by all the major networks as this
• 5:33
  verdict comes down all. Right, moving on.
• 5:36
  A key PFAS and a triple F CMO. So a key CMO was entered by the
• 5:40
  court on February 25th. What did this order require and
• 5:44
  what does everyone need to know to do now?
• 5:46
  Yeah, this was a good order that came down, but basically it's
• 5:49
  setting certain requirements 14 days from that February 25th
• 5:54
  order to get the fax sheets uploaded, to get the medical
• 5:57
  records uploaded, different types of proof of injuries, any
• 6:01
  proof of exposure. So if you remember, in the fall
• 6:05
  of last year, we were able to submit joint complaints with up
• 6:08
  to 99 plaintiffs and each complaint.
• 6:11
  Everybody kind of filed their cases before the deadline.
• 6:14
  That triggered A requirement to submit the fact sheet.
• 6:17
  And now the courts kind of going through the clean out process.
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  So the people who didn't submit the fact sheets and the
• 6:23
  documents, you have a little bit more time here, but the court
• 6:26
  indicate they're going to start dismissing these cases outright
• 6:29
  if you don't get the documents in.
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  So expect to hear sometime in the second quarter we'll get a
• 6:34
  real hold on the total number of cases and how many fall into
• 6:38
  each of the specific injuries. That's what the court and the
• 6:41
  defendants need to resolve these cases.
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  It's a good development, but make sure you check all of your
• 6:46
  cases. You don't want to get any
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  tripped up and dismissed when you have a viable case out
• 6:51
  there. Yep, get your cases worked out
• 6:54
  and get them filed as soon as possible.
• 6:56
  All right, moving on to the last update we have here.
• 6:58
  So Depo Provera, one of the fastest growing MDLS of 2026, we
• 7:02
  saw 1000 case increase bringing us to nearly 3100 filed cases.
• 7:07
  What are some of the key developments in this growing
• 7:09
  litigation? Yeah, that was a huge spike in
• 7:11
  the filings. Like you mentioned, Mark, at the
• 7:13
  end of January, we only had 2000 cases.
• 7:16
  Now we're up above 3000 cases. So what we have going on here is
• 7:21
  that the liability picture keeps getting stronger.
• 7:23
  We have a case management conference coming up this week.
• 7:27
  The judge sent the Daubert arguments is going to be at the
• 7:30
  end of May. That seems like a slam dunk now
• 7:33
  for the plaintiffs after the warning label got updated like
• 7:36
  we suggested. So we're racing forward to
• 7:39
  potentially the first bellwether trial in December of 2026.
• 7:43
  That will really be that rocket docket we talked about once this
• 7:47
  MDL was formed. So there's a lot of excitement,
• 7:49
  a lot of momentum building. I think we're going to see big
• 7:52
  numbers and filings the next couple months, but this is one
• 7:55
  that seems to be going in plaintiff's favor so far.
• 7:58
  Hopefully we can keep the momentum going to the bellwether
• 8:01
  trial. Interesting to see it.
• 8:03
  It's funny because this is like a traditional mass tour where we
• 8:05
  haven't seen a drug on this list that much recently.
• 8:08
  Yeah, you're right. This, this brings us back to the
• 8:10
  old school days of the drug and device mass tort.
• 8:13
  So it's good to see one of those and it just shows we can really
• 8:17
  work those up and, and you know, the same philosophy applies to
• 8:21
  those cases as well. Well, Joe, thank you very much
• 8:24
  for the most important 10 minutes of mass torts.
• 8:25
  We'll be back again next week with the full squad.