Dirksen Federal Courthouse, Chicago
CHICAGO — A federal jury has sided with Mead Johnson & Co. in a high stakes trial, finding the company can't be held liable for the death of a premature infant, who allegedly became severely ill after the child was fed an Enfamil-brand cow's milk-based formula in the hospital a few weeks after birth.
The trial, which was the first in Chicago federal court for the sprawling baby formula litigation, marked a significant victory for the maker of Enfamil-brand infant formula.
And it marked the latest blow to the efforts by plaintiffs' trial lawyers to move forward with a wave of litigation seeking to extract potentially billions of dollars in payouts from America's two largest baby formula producers over claims the companies didn't do enough to prevent premature infants from becoming severely ill or dying from a condition linked to the consumption of cow's milk-based formula.
That condition, known as necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, results in the death of bowel tissue and can lead to severe illness and death in newborns, particularly if they are born premature. NEC carries a fatality rate of around 15-40% in infants suffering from the condition.
Thousands of NEC-related "failure to warn" lawsuits have been filed against Mead Johnson and their main competitor, Similac-brand formula maker Abbott Laboratories, in courts in Illinois and throughout the country since the end of 2020.
At least hundreds of the lawsuits remain pending against the companies in state courts, including in Madison, St. Clair and Cook counties.
However, more than 800 other cases are also pending in a consolidated action in Chicago federal district court, also known as a multi-district litigation, or MDL.
The cases in both federal and state courts generally have struggled to gain traction, overall. On one hand, juries in Illinois state courts have handed down big verdicts. In Cook County, for instance, a jury in April 2026 awarded a combined $70 million to the families of four infants who contracted NEC.
But other juries in Illinois and elsewhere have sided with the formula makers. And some of the verdicts that juries have delivered for plaintiffs have been overturned on appeal.
In June, for instance, an Illinois state appeals court reversed a $60 million verdict in favor of a plaintiff in a case out of St. Clair County.
In federal court, plaintiffs had struggled to advance their claims to trial.
As part of that action, Pallmeyer, in consultation with attorneys for both sides, selected four cases to serve as so-called "bellwether" cases. While pre-trial proceedings would continue to be consolidated for the other 700-plus cases, legal teams would prepare to take those four cases to trial.
However, in three of the four bellwethers, Pallmeyer granted summary judgment to Abbott Labs. In those cases, Pallmeyer repeatedly found that plaintiffs' central claim — that their babies would have been fed human breast milk rather than the cow's milk-based infant formulas, if the companies had only better warned doctors and the public — didn't hold up, mostly because alternatives to those allegedly risky formulas are in short supply.
The judge agreed that no "alternative warning" would have made much of a difference. Essentially, the judge ruled doctors had to feed the babies something, regardless of the increased risk of NEC, relative to human milk.
However, in the fourth bellwether, Pallmeyer allowed plaintiffs to take their claims to trial against Mead Johnson. In that case, the judge said Mead Johnson would need to defend itself before a jury over plaintiffs' claims that the company allegedly could have reformulated its products to a safer version since 2015, but allegedly chose not to.
That trial centered on claims brought by plaintiff Alexis Inman, a North Carolina woman whose newborn son died a few weeks after he was born at 29-weeks gestation. Inman claimed Mead Johnson should pay for her son's death, because he developed NEC after consuming Enfamil-brand formula while in a neonatal intensive care unit.
While the case was tried in Chicago federal court, it was litigated under North Carolina state law, as her case was initially filed in North Carolina state court.
At the beginning of the trial on Aug. 17, Inman's attorneys from the firm of Levin Papantonio, said the trial marked a "pivotal moment that brings the devastated families and premature babies affected by NEC a step closer to justice."
After two weeks of proceedings, however, jurors sided with Mead Johnson, apparently agreeing that Inman's son died because his birth was extremely premature and was at high risk, regardless of what he was fed.
Further, the company argued the formula was fed to the child under doctors' guidance because they believed the child was not otherwise obtaining enough nutrition to survive.
Following the verdict, Mead Johnson released a statement, thanking the jury for its decision.
"Today’s verdict affirms Mead Johnson’s view that the science doesn’t support the claims here or in the litigation more broadly," Mead Johnson said in the statement. "We strongly reject any assertion that any of our products cause NEC, and we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves against all such claims in the interest of safeguarding the health of premature babies."
The company further noted that, with the verdict, Mead Johnson currently faces no outstanding jury verdicts, as juries in other cases have ruled in their favor or other verdicts have been overturned on appeal.
A spokesperson for the Levin Papantonio firm did not respond to a request for comment from The Record.
It is not known how this verdict may ultimately affect the outcome of the remaining thousands of cases still facing Mead Johnson and Abbott Labs, collectively, in state and federal courts in Illinois, Missouri and elsewhere.
It may still result in a substantial payout.
On Aug. 20, for instance, Abbott announced it had agreed to pay $670 million to settle about 2,000 cases lodged by three law firms.
According to published reports, those cases involved plaintiffs represented by the firms of TorHoerman Law, of Edwardsville and Chicago; Holland Law Firm, of St. Louis; and Stranch Jennings & Garvey, of Nashville, Tennessee.
The settlement included one notable case in which a St. Louis jury had ordered Abbott to pay just one family $495 million.
Mead Johnson did not respond to a question from The Record concerning what may come next in the baby formula litigation it faces, in light of the formula makers' victories in all four bellwether cases in the federal MDL.
Mead Johnson was represented at trial by attorneys Rachel Cannon, of the firm of the Steptoe firm, of Chicago, and Phyllis Jones, of Covington & Burling, of Washington, D.C.
