High court puts Whole Foods back in hot seat over baby food debacle 

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court renewed a lawsuit against Whole Foods for selling baby food containing heavy metals on Tuesday, siding with two Texas parents who claim their child was sickened by the store’s products.

In a unanimous ruling, the justices found that a lower court error unlawfully forced the parents to litigate their case in federal court instead of state court.

“The prejudice to the plaintiff in such circumstances is clear, for ‘plaintiffs are ordinarily allowed to select whatever forum they consider most advantageous,’” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote for the court.

Sotomayor noted that the Palmquists’ claims against the baby food company could not proceed in federal court.

“The Palmquists exercised their right to choose a state forum by purposefully and properly joining a nondiverse defendant against whom they could not proceed in federal court, and diligently asserted that right by promptly moving to remand the case to state court,” Sotomayor wrote. “The decision to structure their case in this way was the Palmquists’ to make.”

A federal judge found Sarah and Grant Palmquist’s theory that their son’s severe autism spectrum disorder was caused by ingesting heavy metals in Earth’s Best Organic baby food wasn’t supported by science. But the Palmquists told the Supreme Court they should have another shot at proving their case in a Texas state court.

The Palmquists celebrated the ruling, saying it reaffirmed long-held principles limiting federal court jurisdiction as Congress intended.

“The decision creates healthy incentives for federal courts to proceed cautiously when adjudicating motions to remand, resolving close calls about the viability of state-law claims in favor of remand so the decisions will be made in the first instance by the state courts to which they are entrusted under our federal scheme,” Russell Post, an attorney with Beck Redden representing the parents, said in a statement.

After a 2021 congressional staff report found the presence of metals in baby foods, the Palmquists sued Earth’s Best maker Hain Celestial Group for negligence. The Food and Drug Administration rebutted the report, stating that it is impossible to prevent all naturally occurring elements from entering the food supply through soil, water or air. The agency confirmed it regularly tests baby food products to mitigate exposure to harmful elements.

Hain, then a citizen of Delaware and New York, said the case should be moved to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, the authority of federal courts to hear lawsuits between citizens of different states.

However, the Palmquists also sued Whole Foods, where they claimed to have bought baby food. Whole Foods is a citizen of Texas. Hain argues the Palmquists fraudulently joined Whole Foods to the suit to keep the case in state court.

The federal judge sided with Hain, dismissing the claims against Whole Foods. After over a year of discovery and a trial that included seven days of testimony from the Palmquists’ witnesses, the court concluded none of the experts could connect the ingestion of heavy metals to their son’s symptoms. The court held that the Palmquists didn’t present sufficient evidence to prove causation.

Without reviewing the merits, the Fifth Circuit determined the lower court erred in dismissing Whole Foods and sent the case back to Texas state court. The appeals court also vacated the ruling against Hain, finding the initial error tainted the final judgment.

During oral arguments in November, Hain argued the Fifth Circuit shouldn’t have vacated and it shouldn’t have to relitigate its case in state court.

Last term, the Supreme Court confronted a similar dilemma involving a pet owner’s suit against a dog food company. In Royal Canin v. Wullschleger), the court held that a federal court still had jurisdiction over a suit after the federal claims were dropped and only state claims remained.

Here, however, the justices upheld the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, agreeing that the lower court error had to be remedied prior to final judgment.

“When the Fifth Circuit reversed the district court’s error, it restored Whole Foods to the case and correctly held that the jurisdictional defect had not been cured,” Sotomayor wrote. “That meant that the defect ‘lingered through judgment’ and that the district court’s judgment therefore ‘must be vacated.’”

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, wrote a separate concurrence to express skepticism of the “improper joinder” doctrine. He said federal courts shouldn’t be allowed to enlarge their docket by reviewing the merits of cases they do not have jurisdiction over.

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