Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
AUSTIN, Texas – Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-Tylenol crusade has apparently inspired Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to take action as Paxton sets his sights on a higher office.
The longtime AG who is running for U.S. Senate next year sued Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue today over supposed links between acetaminophen and autism. The theory that pregnant mothers are endangering their children by using Tylenol has been rejected in court and by groups like the Autism Science Foundation.
Still, Paxton hired the firm Keller Postman to pursue his case in Panola County District Court. That firm is part of a leadership team that failed to back autism claims in federal court with reliable scientific evidence, a judge found. They are hoping the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will revive their cases.
Paxton’s case claims J&J and Kenvue hid the dangers of Tylenol and violated the state Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act. Defendants in federal courts have said their products comply with all federal labeling regulations.
“State-law duties to add unapproved warnings to supplement the general warning – rather than approved warnings to replace it – are incompatible with federal law and thus preempted,” they wrote to the Second Circuit, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments in November.
Keller Postman, Watts Guerra and The Lanier Law Firm first produced five experts to back their claims Tylenol use leads to autism and ADHD. Defendants argued the experts’ evidence was “cherry-picked” and refused to address the role of genetics.
“They are correct,” Judge Denise Cote wrote.
One of those experts – Dr. Andrea Baccarelli – was a part of RFK Jr.’s announcement in September of his plan for his Department of Health and Human Services to link Tylenol and autism. A press release from President Donald Trump included a quote from Baccarelli, a Harvard professor whose opinions in the federal case were found too unreliable to put in front of a jury.
“Despite the identified risk of genetic confounding, Dr. Baccarelli gives short shrift to the issue. The discussion in his reports is incomplete, unbalanced and at times misleading,” Cote wrote.
“In general, Dr. Baccarelli downplays those studies that undercut his causation thesis and emphasizes those that align with his thesis.”
Paxton and Keller Postman’s lawsuit spends several pages relying on the HHS’s new stance on acetaminophen, stating a label change is “supported by ample scientific evidence.” The authority of a federal agency, even one run by a former trial lawyer like Kennedy Jr., is a bonus for plaintiff lawyers.
Paxton is increasingly handing lucrative state work to private attorneys even though his office has 700 lawyers of its own, the Texas Tribune reported in July. Tony Buzbee, who defended Paxton in his 2023 impeachment trial, won a contract from the AG as well as Keller Postman, which won $97 million in fees from the Meta settlement in 2024.
California and New York haven’t hired outside counsel on contingency for any cases since 2015, the Tribune reported, while Paxton has authorized 13 over that period. One beneficiary is Houston lawyer Mark Lanier, who contributed $25,000 to Paxton’s campaign months after signing a contract to represent the state in a lawsuit against Google.
A Paxton spokesperson told the Tribune in a statement the state “could not have gotten a better return on its investment” by hiring outside lawyers.
Paxton has a long history of wresting settlements from companies, increasingly with the help of highly paid private law firms. Reuters reported this month that Google agreed to pay $190 million in fees to Norton Rose Fulbright and two smaller firms for its role in a $1.4 billion consumer privacy settlement.
Keller Postman and Dallas-based McKool Smith won more than $300 million in fees last year for their work on a $1.4 billion biometric privacy suit against Facebook owner Meta Platforms. Paxton bragged it was “the largest settlement ever obtained” by a single state.
Paxton also joined then-AGs Ashley Moody of Florida and Josh Stein of North Carolina to lead a 43-state coalition in 2024 that sued Johnson & Johnson over claims, which J&J denied, that Johnson’s Baby Powder and other talc products contained asbestos. The case settled almost immediately for $700 million. Texas got $61.6 million, second only to California at $78.1 million. The settlement included a consent agreement for J&J to stop selling body powder containing talc in the U.S., which the company had already done to stem the rising cost of litigation.
"This is a major advancement for consumer product safety, as Johnson & Johnson has stopped the manufacturing and marketing of products containing talc powder—which may be linked to serious health issues, including cancer," Moody, like Paxton a Republican, said in a statement the time. The lawsuit contained identical allegations to thousands of similar claims filed by private attorneys across the country.
Paxton sued GM in 2024 for collecting driver data, hitting Allstate with similar claims in January of this year. He secured a $9.5 million settlement from Booking.com and Priceline.com over alleged “junk fees” in August.
Paxton also participated in the $2.7 billion “dieselgate” settlement with Volkswagen in 2016, winning $242 million for Texas environmental programs and attorney fees.
