Published August 23, 2026
A St. Louis jury ruled in favor of Mead Johnson on July 6, 2026, rejecting a claim that its Enfamil Premature 24 formula caused an infant, born at 25 weeks and 3 days, to develop necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). The infant required surgery and suffered lifelong injuries after the diagnosis. The plaintiff, an Illinois mother, argued Mead Johnson failed to warn that its cow's-milk-based preterm formula carried a heightened NEC risk for premature infants; the jury disagreed, and the plaintiff's attorneys said they were evaluating their next steps.
The verdict is notable because it's a state-court loss for plaintiffs in a litigation that has otherwise produced several large, high-profile wins — including a $495 million verdict against Abbott that a Missouri appeals court upheld earlier this year, and a $60 million Enfamil verdict from 2024 that Mead Johnson has since gotten reversed on appeal. Mead Johnson and Abbott together face nearly 1,000 NEC-related lawsuits nationwide, including more than 700 consolidated in a federal multidistrict litigation in Illinois — a separate track from the state case that just concluded.
NEC baby formula cases are being tried one at a time as "bellwethers" — individual trials meant to test how juries respond to the evidence before larger settlement talks take shape. A single defense verdict, like this one, doesn't resolve the hundreds of other pending cases, each of which turns on its own facts: the specific formula used, how premature the infant was, and what warnings existed at the time. The federal MDL's first bellwether trials against Mead Johnson began just weeks after this state-court loss, and more are scheduled into 2027.
Mixed trial outcomes are typical in mass litigation and don't by themselves indicate whether a specific case has merit. If your premature infant was fed Similac or Enfamil and was later diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis, see Atumio's NEC Baby Formula case page for a free eligibility review, or start your case review directly.