On October 5, 2022, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) transferred[1] some 66 autism and ADHD lawsuits[2] to Senior District Judge Denise Cote in the Southern District of New York, thus consolidating all such acetominophen birth defect cases in a mass tort.[3] The case specifically concerns the lack of warning regarding in utero use. On 2022-11-19 Judge Cote among other matters ruled against Walmart's preemption argument (which is often raised in pharmaceutical mass tort cases). Judge Cote likewise ruled against Johnson & Johnson in April 2023.[4] Given the significant media attention and advertising the class action has been receiving, the number of plaintiffs is widely anticipated to considerably increase.[5][6]
The case was thrown out December 18, 2023,[7] with Judge Cote writing "“The unstructured approach adopted by the plaintiffs’ experts permitted cherry-picking, allowed a results-driven analysis, and obscured the complexities, inconsistencies, and weaknesses in the underlying data..."[8]
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetaminophen Autism Mass Tort.
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