A Missouri jury on Friday night ordered Abbott Laboratories to pay $495 million in damages in a lawsuit filed by a premature baby girl who developed severe gastrointestinal illness after consuming Abbott’s formula.
The jury awarded the girl $95 million in damages and the company $400 million in punitive damages, half to go to the girl and half to the state of Missouri, lawyers for the family said.
The lawsuit is one of hundreds against north suburban companies Abbott and Mead Johnson, which allege that their premature infant formulas cause necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal disease in which tissue in the intestinal lining becomes inflamed and dies.
This is the first case against Abbott to go to trial over this issue. In a similar case against Mead Johnson that went to trial in Illinois earlier this year, a jury awarded $60 million in damages to a woman whose son died of NEC after drinking Mead Johnson’s cow’s milk-based premature infant formula.
The Abbott trial began earlier this month in Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis after Illinois resident Margo Gill sued the company. Gill claims her daughter, Robin Davis, developed NEC after being fed Abbott’s cow’s milk-based infant nutrition products as a premature baby. Davis, who was born in 2021, had to undergo major surgery for her NEC diagnosis and continues to suffer from long-term health issues.
“Despite being aware of the risk of NEC, Abbott failed to warn about the significantly increased risk of NEC (and resulting morbidity and mortality) associated with its products or the magnitude of this increased risk,” the lawsuit alleges.
According to Reuters, Abbott’s lawyers argued that the baby’s symptoms were caused by trauma during birth, before she started drinking formula.
“I strongly disagree with this non-unanimous verdict and continue to believe that Robin’s situation is a tragedy for which no one is to blame. I will take all steps to overturn this erroneous verdict,” Governor Abbott said in a statement Friday night.
Abbott said in a statement that there is no scientific evidence that its premature infant products cause or contribute to NEC.
“Specialized formulas and fortifiers, like those in this case, are part of the medical community’s standard of care and, along with breast milk and donor milk, are the only options for feeding premature infants,” Abbott said in a statement.
Abbott also said the ruling “will have no effect on future litigation.”
According to the National Institutes of Health, premature and low-birth-weight babies are at higher risk of developing NEC because of their immature digestive systems, and about 15% to 40% of infants who develop the disease will die.
The now 2-year-old had about 75 percent of his intestines removed after being diagnosed with NEC and has brain damage from the disease, according to the family’s lawyers. Davis has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, cannot walk or talk and is fed through a tube, the lawyers said.
In 2011, the U.S. Surgeon General acknowledged that formula-feeding is associated with increased rates of NEC in premature infants. In a March 2012 policy statement supporting breastfeeding, the American Academy of Pediatrics noted that studies have shown that feeding premature infants breast milk significantly reduces the incidence of NEC. The American Academy of Pediatrics formally recommends breastfeeding or donor milk feeding to reduce the incidence of NEC in premature infants.
