Acetaminophen Autism Mass Tort

On October 5, 2022, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) transferred some 66 autism and ADHD lawsuits 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. The case specifically concerns the lack of warning regarding in utero use. On November 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. Given the significant media attention and advertising the class action has been receiving, the number of plaintiffs is widely anticipated to considerably increase.

The case was thrown out December 18, 2023, 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..."