The gains America has made in health, nutrition, and longevity didn’t happen by accident. Consumers, physicians, scientists, and public health professionals have helped drive that progress. Americans may disagree about the best path to a healthier future, but most share the same goal of helping families live longer, healthier lives.
But what’s not helpful are opportunistic billboard lawyers abusing the court system for a big payday. They are substituting their judgment for that of consumers, physicians, and public health professionals.
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Take, for example, a recent Pennsylvania lawsuit targeting packaged and prepared foods. The suit claimed that shelf-stable and prepared foods caused specific health complications for the plaintiff. This lawsuit sought to substitute speculation for causation. If they are successful, billboard lawyers will have managed to turn a broad category of affordable, everyday food products into their latest litigation target.
And let’s be clear about what’s actually driving these lawsuits: profit.
The Pennsylvania lawsuit was brought by the infamous law firm Morgan and Morgan, which generates a self-proclaimed $2.4 billion in annual revenue. The financial incentives in this type of mass-tort litigation are not subtle. The mass-tort system incentivizes firms to identify and aggressively pursue new litigation targets and place pressure on companies to settle claims, even when the science and the law do not support them.
This is a business model for the big law firms, not a health strategy for the public’s benefit.
The good news for all of us is that the judge saw right through that and got it right.
U.S. District Judge Mia Roberts Perez dismissed the lawsuit. She called the complaint “woefully deficient” in August 2025 — and then rejected the same nearly 150-page complaint again almost a year later.
That means choices about what we eat rightfully remain in the hands of consumers, families, physicians, and health professionals.
But when high-cost lawsuits succeed against the companies that make the food we eat, businesses are forced to compensate for those costs. These costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Product lines get pulled. And the packaged, prepared, and shelf-stable foods that families count on become collateral damage in someone else’s billion-dollar legal gamble.
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These scenarios are not hypothetical. They reaffirm why policy should be crafted in legislatures, standards should be set by regulators, and courts should resolve disputes, not serve billboard attorneys chasing their next big payday.
Judge Perez got it right. Twice. And all of us are better off for it.