In a decisive legal victory, Abbott Laboratories Inc. has secured its third straight bellwether win in the multidistrict litigation (MDL) accusing the company’s cow-milk-based baby formula of causing necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer handed down the ruling Thursday, siding with Abbott after concluding that the plaintiffs failed to prove the feasibility of a human-milk-based alternative to the company’s Similac Special Care formula. The order granted Abbott summary judgment, marking another major defense triumph in the high-stakes litigation.
Judge Finds Alternative ‘Prolacta’ Not a Practical Substitute
The lawsuit, brought by Deondrick Brown Sr. and Rebekah Etienne, claimed their premature son developed NEC and died after being switched to Similac Special Care 24. Before that, the infant had been fed fortified human milk for two months while Etienne was unable to produce breast milk.
However, Judge Pallmeyer determined that the plaintiffs failed to refute Abbott’s evidence showing that “Prolacta,” the proposed human-milk-based product, was not feasible at scale. Abbott’s experts testified that producing such a formula would require an enormous and unavailable supply of human donor milk — enough to feed 62,000 infants between 2010 and 2022.
Under Louisiana law, which governs this case, the burden rested on Abbott to prove infeasibility. The court agreed that Abbott met that burden. The judge highlighted that only lactating women can donate milk, regulations restrict who can qualify, and logistical barriers — from donor screenings to limited insurance coverage — make mass production of a human-milk-based formula “unrealistically expensive and ethically complex.”
