An Illinois court has reversed a $60 million verdict against baby formula maker Mead Johnson over claims the company failed to warn that its products for premature babies could cause a deadly bowel disease, saying the jury wasn’t properly instructed on the law.
In a ruling on Friday, a state appeals court reversed the verdict and ordered a new trial in a lawsuit brought by a mother whose infant son died of necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, after finding that any duty the company, a unit of Reckitt, had to warn about the risk of NEC was to the doctor treating the baby. The jury was improperly told the company had a duty to warn the mother, tainting the entire trial, the court said.
Representatives for Mead Johnson and Jasmine Watson, who sued over the March 2020 death of her son Chance Dean, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Nearly 1,000 lawsuits have been filed against Enfamil manufacturer Mead Johnson, as well as Abbott Laboratories, which makes Similac formulas over similar claims. More than 700 of the cases are centralized in an Illinois federal court, with others pending in state courts including Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
NEC, which mostly affects premature newborns, causes the death of bowel tissue and has an estimated mortality rate of more than 20%.
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.
Abbott CEO Robert Ford suggested in 2024 that the preterm products might become unavailable because of the litigation.
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.
U.S. regulatory agencies and a National Institutes of Health-convened working group said in a 2024 report that current evidence links higher NEC rates to the absence of breast milk, rather than to formula use.
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 had ordered Mead Johnson to pay Watson $60 million after her son 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.
In May, a Missouri appeals court upheld the $495 million verdict against Abbott, finding no errors in the trial. Abbott has asked the state’s Supreme Court to hear the case, court records show.
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 on appeal.
In April, a jury in Chicago awarded four families whose children were diagnosed with NEC after they were fed Abbott baby formula $70 million in damages.
