Abbott Will Pay $670 Million, and Still Won't Say the Formula Was at Fault
Abbott will pay $670 million to settle claims that its preterm formula caused a deadly infant gut disease — while explicitly denying the formula was at fault. The deal is a study in how mass-tort settlements write the check without the apology.
The American formula giant Abbott has agreed to pay $670 million to settle claims that its preterm-infant formula caused a deadly gut disease — and it has done so while carefully insisting that the formula did nothing wrong.
The story, picked up Monday by China's state news agency Xinhua and then spread across Weibo, turns on a disease most parents have never heard of but dread once they do: necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, in which a premature baby's intestinal wall dies. Mortality can pass one in five. The litigation began with an Illinois mother, Margot Gill, who said Abbott's formula caused her premature daughter's NEC. A jury agreed in 2024, awarding close to $495 million. Abbott appealed, and a Missouri appellate court sided with the jury this May.
Rather than keep fighting case by case, Abbott cut a deal. The $670 million settlement covers roughly 2,000 plaintiffs, including Gill, whose claim, with interest, could have cost the company about $600 million on its own. In courtroom arithmetic, that is a reasonable price for an exit.
It is not, however, an admission. Abbott's statement said the agreement moves the company toward "substantially resolving" the overall litigation while maintaining that its products did not cause NEC. That two-step — signing the check while withholding the apology — is what landed strangely on Chinese social media, where imported formula brands carry two decades' worth of accumulated trust, and distrust, from a generation of food-safety scares.
The awkward part is where the math now points. Abbott and its rival Mead Johnson still face roughly 1,700 similar lawsuits involving more than 10,000 plaintiffs, as the Hubei broadcaster Jingshi Live noted. A $670 million resolution is substantial, but so is the pipeline behind it.
For Chinese readers, the episode is an unusually clean lesson in how American mass-tort settlements work: a number big enough for the headline, a denial precise enough for the lawyers, and a public left to do its own translation.