NEC Baby Formula Lawsuit: Why the Verdicts Don't Agree

Two juries have looked at essentially the same allegation against the same company and reached results $425 million apart. That isn’t a sign something has gone wrong with the litigation — it’s what happens when the same causation theory gets tested in different courts, under different rules for which experts a jury is even allowed to hear.

Quick answer: Lawsuits allege that Abbott’s Similac and Mead Johnson’s Enfamil — both cow’s-milk-based preterm formulas — significantly increase the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants, and that the manufacturers failed to warn about it. Both companies’ cases are consolidated in MDL No. 3026 (N.D. Illinois, Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer), but federal bellwether trials against Abbott have been dismissed on summary judgment after the court excluded plaintiffs’ causation experts — meaning they never reached a jury. Meanwhile, state court juries have awarded $495 million (Missouri, 2024) and $70 million (Illinois, 2026) against Abbott on the same core allegation. The first federal bellwether against Mead Johnson to actually reach a jury, Inman v. Mead Johnson, was underway as of this guide’s publication, with no verdict yet reported.

What NEC Is, and What These Lawsuits Allege

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a serious intestinal disease affecting almost exclusively premature infants, in which intestinal tissue becomes inflamed and can die, sometimes requiring emergency surgery and sometimes proving fatal. It’s well established in pediatric medical literature that exclusively formula-fed preterm infants develop NEC at meaningfully higher rates than infants fed human milk.

The lawsuits don’t argue that formula is defective in the way a fractured medical device is defective. The core theory is failure to warn: that Abbott and Mead Johnson knew, from their own research and decades of published pediatric literature, that their cow’s-milk-based preterm formulas carried this elevated risk relative to human milk or human-milk-based fortifiers — and failed to adequately disclose that risk to parents, physicians and hospitals making feeding decisions for the smallest, most vulnerable patients in a NICU.

One MDL, Two Manufacturers, Two Separate Tracks

As with several mass torts covered on this site — see our explainer on how mass tort litigation actually works — “the NEC lawsuit” isn’t one thing. MDL No. 3026, In re: Abbott Laboratories, et al., Preterm Infant Nutrition Products Liability Litigation, consolidates federal claims against both Abbott (Similac) and Mead Johnson (Enfamil, owned by Reckitt Benckiser) before a single judge in the Northern District of Illinois. But within that one MDL, each manufacturer’s bellwether trials have run on its own track, with genuinely different results so far.

Federal Bellwethers: Dismissed Before Reaching a Jury

Several of the earliest federal bellwether trials — brought against Abbott — never reached a jury at all. The court granted summary judgment for Abbott after excluding the plaintiffs’ causation experts under the Daubert standard. In one such ruling, on July 29, 2025, Judge Pallmeyer found the plaintiff’s expert testimony didn’t sufficiently fit the specific infant’s circumstances — the child in that case was born after 32 weeks’ gestation and weighed more than 2,000 grams, outside the range the expert’s own methodology was built to address. That detail matters beyond one case: it suggests the causation science in this litigation is understood as strongest for the most extremely premature, lowest-birth-weight infants, and more contested for larger, later-preterm infants — which is exactly the kind of fact a plaintiff’s own NICU records need to pin down early.

The first federal bellwether to actually reach a jury, Inman v. Mead Johnson, brought over the 2020 death of an infant named Daniel Inman, was underway in the same district as of this guide’s August 2026 publication date. No verdict had been reported as of that date — check the docket or a reputable litigation-tracking source directly for anything more recent than that.

The same dynamic — a single expert-admissibility ruling reshaping an entire docket before any jury gets involved — is currently playing out in the Ozempic and Wegovy GLP-1 litigation, where a Rule 702 hearing scheduled for September 2026 could have similarly outsized consequences for that mass tort’s causation claims. The reverse also happens: see our guide to the Tylenol autism and ADHD litigation, where a federal appeals court reversed a similar expert-exclusion ruling in 2026 and revived more than 500 cases that a Daubert ruling had already dismissed.

State Courts: A Very Different Record Against the Same Defendant

While the federal bellwethers against Abbott were being dismissed before trial, separate cases in state court — outside the MDL entirely, and subject to that state’s own rules on expert admissibility rather than the federal judge’s — produced dramatically different outcomes:

• A Missouri jury (St. Louis) awarded $495 million in July 2024 — $95 million in compensatory damages and $400 million in punitive damages — finding Abbott’s Similac Special Care 24 High Protein formula caused an infant’s NEC.
• An Illinois jury (Cook County) awarded $70 million in April 2026 — $53 million in compensatory damages and $17 million in punitive damages — to four families, finding Abbott liable on product defect, failure to warn and negligence.

Neither the federal dismissals nor the state verdicts cancel each other out; they’re separate cases, in separate courts, decided under separate procedural rules. This is the same lesson our explainer on mass tort litigation makes generally — a bellwether result only tells you about that trial, in that court, on those specific facts — just visible here in an unusually stark form, where forum has produced a bigger swing in outcome than in almost any other litigation on this site.

The Filing Deadline: Discovery Rule and Minor Tolling

An NEC diagnosis often surfaces during a NICU stay, but a parent may not connect it to a specific formula product until much later — sometimes years, after litigation over the formula itself becomes public. Most states address this with a discovery rule, which starts the filing clock when the connection between the formula and the injury was, or reasonably should have been, discovered — not necessarily the date of birth, feeding, or diagnosis.

Because the injured party is an infant, most states also extend the deadline through minor tolling. The specifics vary sharply: Florida gives a minor until seven years after the injury to file, under Fla. Stat. § 95.051; Illinois tolls the clock entirely until the child turns 18, then allows two further years. See our guide to the personal injury statute of limitations by state for how your own state’s combination of discovery rule and minor tolling actually works, since assuming a single national deadline here is a genuine way to lose a valid claim.

Evidence That Actually Matters

• NICU and hospital records identifying the specific formula product, including brand and, where available, lot number
• The infant’s gestational age and birth weight at the time of feeding — already the deciding fact in at least one federal ruling
• Records documenting the NEC diagnosis and its severity, including any surgical intervention
• Feeding records showing whether and when human milk, donor milk, or formula was used
• Where the child later died, records connecting the death directly to the NEC diagnosis

Practical Steps

1. Gather NICU records identifying the exact formula product and your child’s gestational age and birth weight at the time.
2. Don’t assume a federal dismissal or a large state verdict tells you what your own case is worth — both exist in this litigation, for the same defendant.
3. Check your own state’s discovery rule and minor-tolling law separately from anything you read about the MDL’s timeline.
4. Understand which manufacturer is actually involved — Abbott’s Similac and Mead Johnson’s Enfamil are on different tracks within the same MDL.
5. Consult an attorney handling NEC formula claims specifically, given how much the causation science and procedural posture vary case by case.

Sources & Further Reading

• U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois — docket for MDL No. 3026, In re: Abbott Laboratories, et al., Preterm Infant Nutrition Products Liability Litigation, before Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer
• Missouri state court verdict, Gill v. Abbott Laboratories (St. Louis, July 2024) — $495 million, including $400 million in punitive damages
• Illinois state court verdict, Cook County (April 2026) — $70 million against Abbott, brought by four families
• See our guides to how mass tort litigation actually works for the MDL and bellwether framework this litigation is built on, defective product claims and the three liability theories for how failure-to-warn fits alongside design and manufacturing defect, and wrongful death from a defective product or mass tort where an NEC diagnosis proves fatal