By Dietrich Knauth
Aug 20 (Reuters) – Abbott said on Thursday it reached a $670 million settlement with three law firms to resolve legal claims by 2,000 people who alleged harms relating to the company’s specialty formulas for preterm infants.
The settlement includes one large case in which Abbott had already been ordered to pay $495 million. In 2024, a jury in St. Louis found that Abbott’s infant formula caused an Illinois girl to develop necrotizing enterocolitis, a dangerous bowel disease. Abbott had been appealing that verdict to Missouri’s Supreme Court, after a state court of appeals affirmed the judgment in May 2026.
About 1,000 similar lawsuits have been filed against Abbott, which makes Similac formulas, and Mead Johnson, a unit of Reckitt which manufactures Enfamil formulas. More than 800 of the cases are centralized in an Illinois federal court, with others pending in state courts including Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
Necrotizing enterocolitis, which mostly affects premature newborns, causes the death of bowel tissue and has an estimated mortality rate of more than 20%.
The companies have said that, while breast milk protects against the disease, their formulas do not cause it and the benefits of breast milk have long been known to clinicians.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth and Sneha S K; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Edmund Klamann)
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