Children and their parents have sued certain manufacturers and sellers of baby food products. Baby food manufacturers who were named include Gerber Products Company; Nurture, Inc.; Hain Celestial; Walmart, Inc.; Plum Organics, Sprout Foods, Inc.; and Beech-Nut Nutrition Company. Plaintiffs have alleged that they sold baby food products contaminated with elevated levels of arsenic, mercury, and lead, which are powerful neurotoxins. They are known to trigger brain damage, even when children are exposed to them at low doses, and that brain damage can show up as autism or ADHD.
Liability for Contaminated Baby FoodYou should call our lawyers if your baby has developed a neurodevelopmental disorder after consuming the baby food with high levels of neurotoxins made by the manufacturers listed above. For instance, if your toddler ate Gerber baby food products and has been diagnosed with autism, you should seek legal advice on whether you have a claim against Gerber.
To prove liability, our attorneys will need to establish that the baby food has a design, manufacturing or marketing defect. It’s most likely that the affected baby food products have design or formulation flaws that are causing them to be dangerous to babies. Theories under which we may be able to establish the liability of the manufacturer are strict liability, negligence, breach of warranty, and breach of contract. Negligence may be established if we can show that the defendant owed you and your baby a duty of care, breached that duty, and thereby caused your baby’s injuries. With a strict liability claim, it can be a bit more straightforward; we’ll need to show (1) the baby food has a defect, (2) the defect caused the harm your baby suffered after consuming the baby food.
Legal Counsel to Prove CausationRegardless of the legal theory used, our experienced lawyers will need to prove that the contaminated baby food caused your child’s injuries. The scientific community has reached a consensus that exposure to heavy metals early in life can cause brain injuries that arise from an interaction between the metals and genes and present as autism or ADHD. Heavy metals have no useful operations within the body and contribute to neurodevelopmental troubles. Low levels of lead, for instance, are associated with attention deficits, conduct disorders, delinquency, and hyperactivity, as well as autistic behaviors.
Baby food manufacturers gathered into a consortium, the Baby Food Council, along with third party organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund and Healthy Babies Bright Futures. The Baby Food Council shared amongst themselves data on metal levels in baby foods. They put forward a Baby Food Standard that would have given companies a framework to slowly reduce contaminants through regular testing procedures and better practices. However, the defendants all withdrew from the standard, which meant that babies continued to be exposed to elevated levels of metal.
Chicago Attorneys for Multidistrict Litigation Around the CountryRecently, the baby food lawsuits alleging there are neurotoxins in the products were transferred for coordinated pretrial proceedings. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation found that all of the lawsuits involved common questions of fact and law since the plaintiff children suffered brain injuries that arose out of the same set of operative facts or wrongful conduct. The scientific and medical evidence, along with the discovery, in all of these cases will be substantially similar. Many of the same witnesses will need to appear to testify and similar documents will need to be produced for the other side. The panel noted that there had been industry-wide coordination between the manufacturers’ actions that led to the harm to the children.
Consult Trustworthy Attorneys About Compensation for Your Baby’s Baby Food InjuriesCall the seasoned Chicago-based product liability lawyers of Moll Law Group if your baby or child suffers from neurodevelopmental disorders after consuming baby food. We are dedicated to helping families across the nation who have been injured by defective products. Complete our online form or call us at 312.462.1700.