Bryce Martinez Lawsuit: 11 Defendants and the Dismissal

The Bryce Martinez lawsuit was the first major personal injury case in the United States to blame ultra-processed foods for a person’s illness. Filed in December 2024 against eleven of the country’s largest food and beverage companies, it alleged that a childhood spent eating branded snacks, cereals, and sodas caused Martinez to develop Type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by age 16. A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed the case in August 2025, ruling that the complaint never tied his illnesses to any specific product.¹

Who Bryce Martinez Is and What He Claimed

Martinez was 18 when he filed suit on December 10, 2024, in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County. He said he had regularly eaten more than 100 branded ultra-processed products throughout his childhood, including Bagel Bites, Sour Patch Kids, Honey Bunches of Oats, Hot Pockets, Pepsi, Minute Maid, Slim Jims, Chex Mix, Cheez-It, and Starburst.² By 16, he had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The complaint described the products as “industrially produced edible substances” that were engineered with chemical additives and formulation strategies to maximize addictiveness, and it alleged that the defendants ran marketing campaigns aimed at children to drive consumption.³ A central theme was the tobacco parallel. Martinez’s lawyers argued that from the 1980s through the 2000s, tobacco companies including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds owned major food brands such as Kraft and Nabisco, and that those parents brought their playbook for addictive product design and youth marketing into the food business.⁴ The complaint referenced a 1999 meeting of food industry executives in Minneapolis where one Kraft executive allegedly asked, “With all this, can the trial lawyers be far behind?”

Morgan & Morgan and Seeger Weiss LLP represented Martinez. Rene Rocha of Morgan & Morgan said “there’s thousands of kids out there who are dealing with these types of health problems and have been wronged by these companies.”⁴

The Eleven Companies Named as Defendants

The complaint named Kraft Heinz Company, Mondelez International, Post Holdings, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle USA, Kellanova, WK Kellogg Co., Mars Incorporated, and ConAgra Brands.³⁵ Court records do not show a motion to send the case back to state court.

Why the Case Was Dismissed

Judge Mia R. Perez granted the defendants’ omnibus motion to dismiss on August 25, 2025, throwing out the complaint in its entirety under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6).¹ Two problems drove the ruling.

No Link Between Specific Products and His Illnesses

The complaint listed more than 100 brands, covering thousands of individual products with different ingredients, but it never said which items Martinez actually ate, how often, in what quantities, or over what stretch of time.¹ Judge Perez emphasized that Type 2 diabetes is a “multifactorial disease” with possible causes ranging from genetics to inactivity to poor diet generally, and the complaint made no effort to rule out those alternatives.⁶

Lumping All Eleven Defendants Together

The court also called the complaint a “shotgun pleading.” It grouped all eleven companies together without specifying which one made which product, or which one was responsible for which conduct. That approach failed to give each defendant adequate notice of the claims against it under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8. Judge Perez closed with a pointed line: “Injured plaintiffs may recover if a defective product causes them injury but prospective plaintiffs may not search for defective products in order to find something to which to attribute liability for their injuries.”¹

What Happened After the Dismissal

Martinez’s team did not appeal. In late November 2025, they filed a motion asking to amend the complaint with more specific allegations.⁷ Federal records show the case was marked terminated on December 1, 2025, with only administrative filings appearing on the docket into early 2026.⁸ As of mid-2026, legal commentators described the effort to refile as unresolved, with an appeal still available in theory.⁹

Why the Case Still Matters

Even though it failed, the Martinez complaint opened a lane that other plaintiffs have since tried to widen. In December 2025, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu sued ten of the same companies Martinez had named, alleging violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law and public nuisance statute. Instead of trying to prove one person’s diet caused one person’s disease, the city framed the harm as societal, seeking court orders to curb marketing to children, require consumer education, and impose penalties tied to healthcare costs.¹⁰ The National Association of Manufacturers called the case “frivolous and agenda-driven,” arguing the companies fully comply with FDA safety standards.¹¹

Emily Broad Leib, who directs the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, said the San Francisco case matters because public nuisance and unfair competition theories can work around the individual causation problems that sank Martinez. She noted that the dismissal rested on “insufficient allegations” rather than a ruling that food companies cannot be held liable.¹²

The tobacco comparison Martinez’s lawyers drew has real limits. A smoker typically used one brand for years, making it straightforward to trace disease to a manufacturer. People eat hundreds of products from dozens of companies, which is exactly the wall the Martinez complaint hit.⁴¹² For now, the Martinez case reads as a warning to plaintiffs’ lawyers working this territory: sweeping allegations against an entire industry, without specific products and specific exposures, will not survive a motion to dismiss.

1
Penn State Agricultural Law Center. Martinez v. Kraft Heinz, Opinion
2
Philadelphia Inquirer. Processed Foods Lawsuit Bucks County
3
Morgan & Morgan. Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Company, Inc., et al., Filed Complaint
4
Bloomberg Law. Novel Case Aims to Make Ultra-Processed Food the New Tobacco
5
CourtListener. Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Company, Inc., DocketThe Food Wars and the Courts
6
Washington Legal Foundation. Causation Successful in Martinez v. Kraft Heinz
7
Arnold & Porter. The Latest Litigation Threat Targeting UPFs
8
CourtListener. Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Company, Inc., Docket
9
Harris Beach Murtha. Ultra-Processed Food Lawsuits: 5 Things Food Companies Should Know
10
NPR. San Francisco Sues Manufacturers of Ultraprocessed Foods
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National Association of Manufacturers. San Francisco Sues Food and Beverage Manufacturers: NAM Responds
12
Harvard Law School. The New Case Against Ultraprocessed Food