Baby Food MDL Daubert Ruling Narrows the Autism and ADHD Claims
On Oct. 15, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the Northern District of California granted partial summary judgment to Gerber (Nestle), Walmart, and Whole Foods in MDL 3101, eliminating autism-spectrum-disorder and ADHD causation claims from the consolidated baby food docket. The order followed exclusion of five of plaintiffs' six expert witnesses under Daubert.
The surviving sixth expert could not, standing alone, establish a causal chain from heavy-metal exposure in baby food to an ASD or ADHD diagnosis, the court held. IQ-loss and general learning-disability claims rested on different epidemiological support and survive intact, keeping a meaningful share of the docket moving toward bellwether selection.
For firms holding baby-food inventory, the ruling forces an immediate re-sort. Cases pleaded primarily on autism or ADHD outcomes lose their strongest causation theory, while IQ-loss and learning-disability claims become the leverage point in settlement talks going forward. Defense counsel in other consumer-product mass torts should be expected to cite Corley's approach as a template for an expert-gateway motion rather than a merits fight.
Bellwether committees should expect pressure to swap ASD/ADHD-heavy plaintiffs for IQ-loss plaintiffs in the next pool, and firms should audit their own retained experts before a similar motion lands in their docket.
Firms with baby-food inventory should reclassify case value around IQ-loss and learning-disability claims now, before the next Daubert motion narrows the field further.
Geller v. Uber Closes the Household-Account Arbitration Loophole
The Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously, 5-0, on Sept. 24 in Geller v. Uber Technologies, Inc., 2026 IL 132066, that wrongful-death heirs cannot be compelled into arbitration under either the decedent's Uber account or a surviving family member's separate account.
The court held arbitration clauses bind only the signatory, and only for claims arising from that signatory's own use of the platform. A wrongful-death claim brought by heirs is a distinct statutory cause of action, not a derivative extension of the decedent's contract terms.
The underlying trial now proceeds in Cook County Circuit Court. Because Illinois's reasoning tracks standard wrongful-death-statute language found in nearly every state, counsel litigating rideshare and platform-economy injury cases elsewhere can cite Geller as persuasive authority against compelled arbitration, even where a defendant's terms purport to bind all household users of an account.
Counsel drafting opposition briefs to motions to compel should pull Geller now rather than wait for a local appellate decision to catch up.
Counsel defending a motion to compel arbitration in a rideshare wrongful-death case now has a citable, unanimous state high court opinion closing the household-account loophole.
SCOTUS Opens Broker Negligent-Hiring Claims Nationwide
The U.S. Supreme Court resolved a long-running circuit split on May 14, ruling 9-0 in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that state-law negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act.
The Court held such claims fall within FAAAA's safety exception, siding with the Sixth and Ninth Circuits over the Seventh and Eleventh, which had read the statute as preempting broker liability outright.
The holding opens negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers as a viable, nationwide theory in trucking cases where a broker selected a carrier with a documented safety history, regardless of circuit. Counsel should revisit trucking cases previously declined or settled cheap on preemption grounds, particularly in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuit footprints.
Discovery practice should now routinely demand broker vetting files, FMCSA scores reviewed at time of hire, and prior incident history, since that record decides negligent-hiring claims post-Montgomery.
Trucking cases with a broker defendant in the Seventh or Eleventh Circuit deserve a second look now that FAAAA preemption is off the table nationwide.
Texas Appellate Courts Tighten the Negligence-Theory and Causation Line
Two Texas appellate rulings this month tighten the margin for error in how negligence theories and damages get submitted to a jury. On Oct. 14, a Texas Court of Appeals reversed an $8.9 million shopper-assault verdict, holding that a specific negligence theory had been improperly submitted to the jury, and remanded the case.
Separately, the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth ruled Oct. 8 in Maya Management Group LLC v. Chapman that a slip-and-fall plaintiff's default-admission liability finding stands, but the full damages award does not. The court held a default admission establishes that the defendant was responsible for the fall itself, not that the fall caused the specific injuries plaintiff later treated for.
The distinction matters for firms building cases on motion practice rather than trial testimony. A defendant's failure to answer discovery can lock in liability for the fall, but counsel still needs medical causation testimony tying the fall to each treated condition, or risks remand on damages alone as happened in Chapman.
Jury-charge drafting on premises-liability negligence theories in Texas deserves a fresh look given the $8.9 million reversal; appellate courts there are scrutinizing submission language more closely than in prior cycles.
Default-admission liability wins in Texas slip-and-fall cases no longer substitute for a causation expert at the damages phase.
Colorado and Minnesota Verdicts Reinforce Economic-Damages Authority
Colorado's Supreme Court used Banner Health v. Gresser to settle a recurring post-verdict fight. The unanimous opinion, issued Oct. 20, 2025, upheld a jury's $27.6 million economic damages award for an infant with cerebral palsy caused by labor-and-delivery negligence at North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley.
The court held that Colorado's Health Care Availability Act did not strip the jury of its common-law authority to determine economic damages, rejecting the hospital's remittitur argument. Plaintiffs' counsel statewide are already citing Gresser to resist remittitur motions in high-economic-damages birth-injury cases.
In Minnesota, a Hennepin County jury returned an $84 million verdict against Fairview Health Services on Sept. 29 in a case where the parties did not dispute the applicable standard of care. The fight was purely factual: whether a physician assistant's in-person chest-pain exam in October 2022, followed by a January 2023 telehealth follow-up, met that agreed standard before the patient died of complications from an exercise-induced heart attack.
The size of the Fairview award tracks lost future earnings rather than punitive intent, and the defendant retains remittitur and appeal options; counsel building telehealth-era malpractice inventory should note the fight increasingly turns on what a remote visit did or didn't capture.
Telehealth follow-up visits are now a standalone liability exposure point in malpractice litigation, independent of the underlying standard-of-care dispute.
What This Week Means for Lien-Based Referrals and Case Valuation
Medical providers on lien agreements watch causation rulings like the baby-food MDL order for a practical reason. When autism and ADHD causation theories disappear from a docket, the remaining IQ-loss cases carry the full weight of outstanding liens, and providers should recalibrate collection timelines accordingly.
In Los Angeles County, lien negotiation on mass-tort-adjacent referrals increasingly turns on whether a case survives a Daubert challenge before a lien gets renegotiated or sold downstream. Providers listed on lien-based treatment directories should ask referring counsel directly which causation theory a case rests on before extending further treatment on lien.
The first hard valuation signal for the social-media adolescent-addiction docket, MDL 3047 in the Northern District of California, arrives Oct. 28, when the joint bellwether trial K.G.M. v. Meta et al. goes to a Los Angeles jury against Meta, YouTube, and Snap. With 3,824 cases pending as of Oct. 1, that verdict becomes the first real contingency-math data point for this inventory.
Firms and providers coordinating lien-based referrals should treat Oct. 28 as worth tracking regardless of practice area, since bellwether outcomes in one mass tort routinely reset lien-pricing assumptions in adjacent dockets.
Providers extending treatment on lien in mass-tort-adjacent cases should confirm which causation theory survives before the next billing cycle, not after.