Abbott Pays $670 Million to Exit a Missouri Food Verdict

Abbott Laboratories will pay about $670 million to end one St. Louis verdict and claims for about 2,000 other infants. The company said that sum is only about $70 million more than paying the Gill judgment plus interest.

In an Aug. 20 statement it filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Abbott said the deals resolve the Gill case and 2,000 others and are not an admission of liability. The same can of preterm formula is still a grocery item in Missouri law and a doctor-ordered product in Illinois.

$70 Million for 2,000 Extra Infants

A St. Louis jury in July 2024 awarded Margo Gill $495 million after her daughter Robynn Gill developed necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, in a neonatal intensive care unit. The split was $95 million in compensatory damages and $400 million in punitive damages, on a 9-3 vote.

Abbott appealed in December 2024. The Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District affirmed on May 5, 2026, and on June 22 refused to send the case to the state supreme court. By August the judgment plus interest had reached about $600 million. Abbott then folded Gill and the extra infants into one package with three law firms: TorHoerman in Chicago, Holland Law Firm in St. Louis, and Stranch, Jennings & Garvey in Nashville.

HOW THE $670 MILLION BREAKS

If that leftover were split evenly, each of the 2,000 extra claims would price at about $35,000, a figure no one should treat as an actual payout grid. Individual deals are confidential. The arithmetic only shows how little room was left once Gill was taken off the board.

A St. Louis Jury Treated Similac as Food

Robynn Gill was born at 26 weeks in August 2021. When she was just over a month old and weighed 1,370 grams, the Cardinal Glennon NICU team switched her from fortified human milk to Abbott’s Similac Special Care 24 High Protein. She developed NEC, had extensive surgery, and was left with irreversible brain damage, her mother told the jury.

Lawyers argued Abbott had known for years that cow’s milk-based preterm formula raised NEC risk in babies under 1,500 grams and put no warning on the label. Abbott said there is no reliable scientific evidence that the products cause NEC. The appeals court kept a key defense out of the case.

Abbott’s preterm formula is a food not a medical product.

Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District, Gill v. Abbott Laboratories, May 5, 2026

Because the court treated the can as food, Margo Gill could tell the jury she would have asked nurses to stay on human milk if a warning had reached her. A Cochrane review of 11 trials in 2,261 very preterm or very low-birthweight infants found that donor milk reduces NEC risk by half compared with formula, with high-certainty evidence. That is the science Gill’s lawyers wanted in a parent’s hands. Missouri let them put it there.

Illinois Put Neonatologists in the Middle

Across the river, the same feeding fight produced the opposite rule. Jasmine Watson’s son Chance Dean was born at 31 weeks and 2 days on March 3, 2020, weighing 1,660 grams. His twin, Chase, survived. Chance received mother’s milk and donor milk in St. Louis, then Enfamil Premature 24 after a transfer to Memorial Hospital in Illinois, which had no donor milk. He developed NEC on March 24, had three surgeries, and died at 25 days.

A St. Clair County jury awarded Watson $60 million. On June 12, 2026, the Illinois Appellate Court, Fifth District, reversed and sent the case back. Justice Michael D. McHaney wrote that no infant in that NICU could receive the formula without a physician’s order, and that neonatologists had weighed gestational age, birth weight, growth, and the NEC risk of formula versus human milk. In that setting the manufacturer’s duty to warn ran to physicians, not to the mother.

Watson’s lawyers had said the product can be bought online and is not an FDA prescription drug, so the parent had to be warned. The appellate court said Chance never left the hospital and his mother never bought the can. Abbott’s Aug. 20 statement cited that holding, and a March 2026 Florida ruling in Ennix v. Abbott that dismissed claims on the same doctrine, as a defense that matters in a substantial number of remaining cases.

What Abbott Still Faces in 12,700 Infant Claims

After the deals, Abbott said roughly 1,700 lawsuits are still pending for about 12,700 infants. The company is not treating that census as 12,700 clean trials. It listed four groups it wants stripped out.

CLAIMS ABBOTT WANTS STRUCK

• Two makers named: Suits that name both Abbott and Mead Johnson without saying which formula the infant actually received.
• NEC before formula: Infants diagnosed with the disease before any formula was given.
• No NEC diagnosis: Plaintiffs who were never diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis at all.
• Duplicate filings: The same child appearing in more than one lawsuit in different courts.

Those 12,700 infant claims still on the docket are the inventory Abbott called a mix of overlapping and empty files. Five days after the NEC deals, Abbott separately agreed to pay $88.5 million to settle investor claims over its 2022 Sturgis, Michigan, plant recall, a different docket about powdered-formula contamination, not NICU feeding.

Some posts still fuse the two fights. The $670 million is about NEC in hospital preterm formula. The Sturgis check is about a 2022 production halt. Mixing them inflates one number with the other.

Three Federal Bellwethers, Zero Juries

Abbott said the August deals follow wins in all three federal multidistrict-litigation bellwethers in the Northern District of Illinois, before Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer. No federal NEC bellwether has reached a jury. In July 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a pretrial judgment for Abbott in the first of those cases.

THE RULINGS ABBOTT IS BANKING ON

1. July 26, 2024: A St. Louis jury returns the $495 million Gill verdict against Abbott.
2. March 2026: A Florida state court, applying the learned intermediary doctrine, dismisses preterm-formula claims in Ennix v. Abbott.
3. May 5, 2026: The Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District affirms Gill and treats the formula as food.
4. June 12, 2026: The Illinois Appellate Court reverses the $60 million Watson verdict against Mead Johnson and remands for a new trial.
5. July 2026: The Seventh Circuit affirms a pretrial judgment for Abbott in the first federal MDL bellwether.
6. August 20, 2026: Abbott announces the $670 million agreements with three law firms.

Pallmeyer has described cow’s-milk-based formulas, including Similac Special Care 24, as remaining essential until human-milk production can cover every NICU, a “lifeboat” product in the court’s analogy, language Abbott repeated in its statement. Federal pretrial wins do not erase Gill. They explain why Abbott would pay almost the full Missouri ticket to leave that courtroom and keep trying the doctor-duty theory everywhere else.

Health Agencies Still Call Formula a Lifeboat

NEC is an inflammatory intestinal disease that typically hits premature infants. Federal agencies estimate one baby dies from it every day in the United States, and survivors can face surgery and lasting brain injury. About 1 in 10 U.S. infants is born premature, according to the CDC as cited by Abbott. Only two companies still make these specialty formulas in the United States. Abbott said the FDA has not asked for changes to the ingredients or the label.

In October 2024 the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health said there is no conclusive evidence that preterm infant formula causes NEC, and strong evidence that human milk is protective. A 100-page working-group report organized by the Department of Health and Human Services said available evidence supports the hypothesis that the absence of human milk raises NEC risk rather than exposure to formula. Human milk does not remove the risk. Infants fed only milk still develop NEC.

The substantial verdicts already entered in other cases, together with the thousands of similar claims now pending, pose a grave threat to the preterm formula supply. Should that supply diminish or be withdrawn, neonatologists and pediatric clinicians would lose an essential instrument of care.

American Academy of Pediatrics and five other medical groups, brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, Aug. 7, 2026

Dr. Mark Corkins, division chief of pediatric gastroenterology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, said, “There is no evidence that the formulas cause NEC. That is why these court cases make no sense to the folks who understand the actual science.” Abbott also quoted the NEC Society: feeding decisions should be made in the NICU, not in courtrooms. Plaintiffs answer that a parent who never sees a warning never gets to join that decision, which is the Missouri theory Abbott just paid to extinguish.

Mead Johnson’s Chicago Trial Opened the Same Week

The first federal jury trial over cow’s-milk-based preterm formula opened in Chicago the same week Abbott announced the deals, with Mead Johnson, the Reckitt unit that makes Enfamil, in the dock and Pallmeyer presiding. Abbott is not in that jury box. Reckitt is testing whether a federal jury will follow the Illinois appellate path or the St. Louis one.

Abbott said it stands by the safety of the products and their role in caring for preterm infants, and that the agreements are in its long-term interest. The $670 million closes Gill and a defined block of files. It does not decide whether the next mother is a consumer of food or a bystander to a physician’s order. That fight is still being tried.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of company statements and court opinions about infant-formula litigation. It is informational only and does not constitute legal advice, medical advice, or investment advice. Readers who have a child with necrotizing enterocolitis, who are considering a claim, or who are making feeding decisions in a neonatal unit should consult a licensed attorney and the infant’s treating neonatologist or pediatrician before acting. Figures, case counts, and docket status reflect Abbott’s Aug. 20, 2026 statement and the opinions cited here and may change as remaining suits move.