By Diana Novak Jones
CHICAGO, April 10 (Reuters) – A jury in Chicago on Friday said Abbott Laboratories must pay $70 million in damages to a group of families that had accused the company of failing to warn that its formula for premature infants can cause a potentially deadly bowel disease, according to a company spokesperson.
The verdict came at the end of a lengthy trial, the latest among hundreds of lawsuits alleging that Abbott’s cow’s milk-based formula products for preterm infants can cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC. Four families’ lawsuits were consolidated for trial.
The jury found the company liable on Thursday and awarded the four families $53 million in compensatory damages, according to the spokesperson. The jury met again on Friday to decide on punitive damages and awarded $17 million.
In a statement, Abbott said it would appeal.
“Science was ignored in this case,” the company said. “This verdict, and the continued pursuit of a theory at odds with regulators and the medical community, risks eliminating vital options for doctors and the most vulnerable infants.”
Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement after the verdict that it “reveals the truth that Abbott hid from the public.”
“No amount of money can help these families recover from this terrible disease, but today’s verdict provides a measure of justice for families who were kept in the dark,” Grimsley said.
Abbott has said the products are essential for premature babies when their mothers cannot produce enough breast milk. The company has denied that they cause NEC.
The disease, which mostly affects premature newborns, causes the death of bowel tissue and has an estimated mortality rate of more than 20%.
The children, who were born in Chicago-area hospitals between 2012 and 2019, developed NEC but survived, according to their lawsuits. Three required surgery, and all live with ongoing health problems, according to the filings.
HUNDREDS MORE LAWSUITS
Nearly 1,000 lawsuits have been filed against Abbott, which makes Similac formulas, and Enfamil manufacturer Mead Johnson, a unit of Reckitt. More than 700 of the cases are centralized in an Illinois federal court, with others pending in state courts in states including Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
The products in question are cow’s milk-based formula and products for fortifying mother’s milk that are specially made for infants in hospital settings, not ordinary formula available to consumers in stores.
Illinois-based Abbott also makes medical devices, adult and child nutrition products and medicines.
The companies have said that while breast milk protects against NEC, their formulas do not cause it, and that the benefits of breast milk have long been known to clinicians.
Abbott CEO Robert Ford suggested in 2024 that the preterm products might become unavailable because of the litigation.
U.S. regulatory agencies and a working group of scientists convened by the National Institutes of Health said in a joint report in 2024 that current evidence supports the hypothesis that it is the absence of breast milk rather than exposure to formula that is associated with an increase in incidence of NEC.
TRIAL RESULTS MIXED
The companies have had a mixed record in the few cases to go to trial thus far.
In 2024, a jury in St. Clair County, Illinois ordered Mead Johnson to pay $60 million to the mother of a premature baby who died after being fed the company’s Enfamil baby formula. A few months later, a St. Louis jury ordered Abbott to pay $495 million in damages in another case. Both verdicts have been appealed.
The American Academy of Pediatrics filed a brief supporting Mead Johnson in its appeal of the verdict against it last year, saying that formula is part of the standard of care for premature babies.
Abbott and Mead Johnson prevailed in one trial in Missouri state court in October 2024, but the judge in that case ordered a new trial after finding that lawyers for the defendants had acted improperly. That ruling is also on appeal.
In March, a Florida state judge dismissed a NEC case slated for an upcoming trial after finding that an additional warning to the family’s doctors would not have changed their decision to use the formula.
No cases have proceeded to trial in federal court, as the judge overseeing that litigation has dismissed three of the four cases selected for bellwether trials.
In the most recent dismissal in October, the judge said that Abbott had presented substantial evidence on the need for the formula and shown the plaintiffs’ proposed alternative was unfeasible.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Bill Berkrot, Kim Coghill and David Gregorio)
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