A court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania recently dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the food and beverage industry “implemented addiction science techniques and predatory marketing campaigns” related to ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Co., No. 2:25-cv-00377, 2025 WL 2447793, at *1, (E.D. Pa. Aug. 25, 2025). While acknowledging concerns about the alleged effects of UPFs on the American diet, the court nonetheless held that the plaintiff’s “woefully deficient” complaint “mandat[ed] dismissal.”
The plaintiff—a nineteen-year-old man who attributes his type-2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to regular consumption of UPFs—brought a variety of negligence, failure-to-warn, concealment, and consumer-protection claims against eleven of the country’s largest food companies. His complaint offers a detailed overview of what the court described as “the troubling science behind the production and marketing of UPFs.”
Despite the length of the plaintiff’s complaint—more than 660 paragraphs—the court determined it lacked the specificity required by “basic pleading rules.” The complaint is almost entirely bereft of plaintiff-specific allegations: the plaintiff “does not allege how often he consumed Defendants’ products, in what amounts, or when.” Nor does he identify which of the defendants’ products he consumed, instead “[p]utting thousands of products at issue without any additional information to identify which caused his harm.” Such an approach is, as the court noted, “unacceptable” under Rule 12(b)(6) and could not possibly support a finding of causation. Separately, the court deemed the plaintiff’s “shotgun pleading” to be “contrary to Rule 8.” By failing to distinguish between the eleven defendants and treating them “as a group without specifying each of the defendant’s wrongful behavior,” the plaintiff disregarded “rudimentary principles” of pleading.. In light of such glaring deficiencies, the court concluded that it could not allow the plaintiff’s case to proceed.