Kraft Heinz has sued Chubb and Liberty Mutual for refusing to cover the food giant's defense against a growing wave of lawsuits blaming its products for causing serious illness.
The complaint, filed September 18, 2026, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, alleges that four insurer entities - ACE American Insurance Company, ACE Property and Casualty Insurance Company, and Federal Insurance Company (collectively the Chubb group), plus Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company - breached their policies by denying coverage for what the filing calls the "Underlying Lawsuits."
Those underlying lawsuits are part of a fast-growing litigation trend targeting so-called "ultra-processed foods" or UPFs. According to the complaint, Kraft Heinz has been named as a defendant in around twelve individual suits since December 2024. Each one alleges that consumers suffered bodily injury - specifically Type 2 Diabetes and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease - from repeated consumption of Kraft Heinz products.
The products named in those suits will be familiar to anyone who has opened an American fridge: Kraft Original Mac & Cheese, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Oscar Mayer deli meats, A.1. Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce, Capri Sun beverages, Kool Aid beverages, Miracle Whip Original Dressing, Velveeta cheese slices, and Lunchables.
Kraft Heinz has also been named in a separate action brought by San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu on behalf of the People of California. That suit alleges unfair competition and public nuisance, claiming Kraft Heinz and other food companies created a "public health crisis" that is costing the city tens of millions of dollars in medical treatment costs.
The policies sitting at the heart of this dispute span nearly two decades. Chubb sold Kraft Heinz or its predecessors primary CGL policies - the bread-and-butter liability coverage that responds to bodily injury claims - every year from 2006 to 2025. Those policies carried per-occurrence limits of $2 million and aggregate limits of $7 million for most of that stretch, rising to $10 million each for the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 policy periods.
From 2020 to 2025, Chubb also sold umbrella policies with $15 million in per-occurrence and aggregate limits, plus five higher-level excess policies. Liberty, for its part, issued primary CGL policies to Kraft Heinz's predecessor Heinz from December 2009 to December 2015, with $2 million per-occurrence limits, $7 million in aggregate limits, and a $2 million per-occurrence deductible. The total coverage purchased, according to the complaint, ran into "hundreds of millions of dollars."
Kraft Heinz says every one of these policies requires the insurers to defend it against any lawsuit alleging bodily injury. Some of the policies go further, the filing notes, expressly covering the cost of defending even "groundless, false, or fraudulent suits."
Here is where the timeline gets pointed. The first underlying UPF suit was filed on December 10, 2024, in Philadelphia. Kraft Heinz notified its insurers, including Chubb, and formally requested coverage on April 22, 2025. Eleven more individual actions and the California Action followed. Kraft Heinz says it handed each one to its insurers as they came in.
According to the complaint, Chubb went quiet for more than a year. On August 13, 2026, Kraft Heinz's coverage counsel emailed Chubb's claims handler to remind the insurer it was on the hook to start paying defense costs from the first dollar, and warned that without a denial, Kraft Heinz would assume coverage was in place.
Three weeks later, on September 4, 2026 - nearly a year and a half after the first claim was handed over - Chubb issued two coverage position letters denying coverage for both the individual lawsuits and the California Action. The complaint alleges Chubb then went further: it demanded that Kraft Heinz "formally withdraw its tender for insurance coverage and/or agree to enter into a tolling agreement," and warned it "may be compelled to file a declaratory judgment action" - in plain terms, a preemptive lawsuit asking a court to rule that Chubb owes nothing.
Liberty's denial came slightly earlier. On August 25, 2026, the filing states, Liberty declared it "owes no obligation to pay defense costs or indemnity" under its policies.
Meanwhile, Kraft Heinz has been paying its own legal bills. The filing states the company has spent "several million dollars" in defense costs, and those costs keep climbing.
The complaint asserts a single count for breach of contract against all four insurer defendants. Kraft Heinz wants the court to order the insurers to honor their policies, pay all defense and indemnity costs up to the applicable limits, and cover its attorneys' fees and interest. It has also asked for punitive damages and demanded a jury trial.
Federal Insurance Company moved the case out of state court and into the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on September 21, 2026, before any defendant had been served, on the basis that all the parties are from different states.
For coverage teams and claims professionals tracking the UPF litigation wave, this case sets up an early and direct test of whether standard CGL policy language - particularly the duty to defend - stretches to cover this new breed of product liability claim.
The allegations in the complaint have not been tested, and no court has made any findings on the merits.
