Abbott Settles Preterm Formula Claims for $670 Million

Abbott Laboratories (ABT ) has agreed to pay approximately $670 million to resolve a $495 million jury verdict over its specialty formulas for preterm infants plus necrotizing enterocolitis claims covering roughly 2,000 additional infants, the company announced on August 20, 2026 and disclosed in a current report filed the same day with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The agreements, reached with three law firms, close out the Gill case, in which a St. Louis jury awarded a plaintiff $495 million in July 2024. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed that verdict in May 2026, per the filing. Rather than pursue a further appeal or pay the judgment, which with accrued interest had grown to approximately $600 million, Abbott settled it alongside the additional claims. The company framed the math plainly: $670 million resolves the judgment plus about 2,000 claimants, against $600 million to satisfy Gill alone.

Abbott stated the agreements are a compromise of disputed claims and “not in any way an admission of liability.” The disclosure does not say how the aggregate splits between the Gill resolution and the roughly 2,000 other claims, whether any payment is covered by insurance, or how the charge will be booked against earnings.

What the Litigation Still Holds

The settlement removes a slice of the docket, not the docket. After these agreements, approximately 1,700 lawsuits remain pending in federal and state courts on behalf of roughly 12,700 individual infants, according to the filing. Abbott said that population includes claims that named both Abbott and Mead Johnson without identifying which manufacturer’s formula was administered, infants diagnosed with NEC before receiving any formula, infants never diagnosed with NEC at all, and individuals appearing in multiple lawsuits across jurisdictions. The company said it continues working to identify and eliminate such claims.

The defense’s recent record in court is part of why the settlement scope reads the way it does. In July 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a pretrial judgment for Abbott in the first federal multidistrict litigation bellwether case involving its preterm formulas. In June 2026, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed a $60 million verdict against Mead Johnson in Watson v. Mead Johnson & Co., finding the trial court had failed to properly apply the learned intermediary doctrine, which holds that a manufacturer’s duty to warn runs to the prescribing physician rather than directly to the patient. A Florida state court applying the same doctrine dismissed preterm formula claims in March 2026.

The products at issue sit inside a two-supplier market. Abbott describes itself as one of only two companies providing specialty preterm formulas in the United States, sold into neonatal intensive care units rather than retail. The Food and Drug Administration regulates the products and, per the company’s statement, has not asked for changes to ingredients or labeling.

The Science Record the Company Is Pointing To

The regulatory and medical-establishment record has moved in the manufacturers’ direction even as verdicts accumulated. In October 2024, the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health issued a joint consensus statement concluding there is no conclusive evidence that preterm infant formula causes NEC, and that the formulas are part of the standard of care for premature infants when human milk is insufficient. A working group organized by the Department of Health and Human Services attributed elevated NEC risk to the absence of human milk rather than exposure to formula.

On August 7, 2026, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the March of Dimes, and five other medical organizations filed a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Mead Johnson’s petition in a related Illinois jurisdiction dispute. The brief calls preterm formula “an indispensable component of neonatal medicine” for the nearly 380,000 premature infants born in the United States each year, and warns that large verdicts and thousands of pending claims pose a grave threat to the product’s supply.

Settlement Terms by the Numbers

• Aggregate payment: approximately $670 million, covering the Gill case and claims on behalf of roughly 2,000 additional infants
• Gill jury verdict: $495 million, awarded July 2024 in St. Louis
• Gill judgment with accrued interest at resolution: approximately $600 million
• Lawsuits still pending: roughly 1,700 in federal and state courts
• Individual infants behind those pending claims: approximately 12,700
• Mead Johnson verdict reversed on appeal: $60 million (Watson, June 2026)
• U.S. preterm births annually: nearly 380,000, per the amici brief
• U.S. suppliers of specialty preterm formula: two, Abbott among them

Abbott signed the SEC report through Philip P. Boudreau, its executive vice president of finance and chief financial officer. The company said it views the agreements as in its best long-term interest and a constructive step toward substantially resolving the overall litigation, leaving the remaining 1,700 cases, and the Supreme Court petition now backed by the medical community’s filing, as the active fronts.