diff --git a/pinot-plugins/pinot-input-format/pinot-json/src/main/java/org/apache/pinot/plugin/inputformat/json/JSONRecordExtractor.java b/pinot-plugins/pinot-input-format/pinot-json/src/main/java/org/apache/pinot/plugin/inputformat/json/JSONRecordExtractor.java
index 01e73f5f4041..a770e5267b0a 100644
--- a/pinot-plugins/pinot-input-format/pinot-json/src/main/java/org/apache/pinot/plugin/inputformat/json/JSONRecordExtractor.java
+++ b/pinot-plugins/pinot-input-format/pinot-json/src/main/java/org/apache/pinot/plugin/inputformat/json/JSONRecordExtractor.java
@@ -67,4 +67,10 @@ public GenericRow extract(Map<String, Object> from, GenericRow to) {
     }
     return to;
   }
+
+  @Override
+  protected boolean isMultiValue(Object value) {
+    // multi value JSON is treated as JSON_ARRAY hence it's never a multi value column
+    return false;
+  }
 }