Plaintiffs’ Lawyers in Judicial Hellholes® Set Sights on New Vital Industry
ATRF has long chronicled the plaintiffs’ bars constant efforts to find their next payday. From hot coffee to baby powder, to herbicides and vanilla-flavored foods, plaintiffs’ lawyers don’t discriminate in the products they seek to exploit.
But now, they have set their sights on manufacturers of life-sustaining formula for premature babies, litigation that could lead to a public health crisis for families across the world.
In March, Reckitt Beckinser was ordered to pay $60 million by an Illinois jury after the company was found liable for the death of the plaintiff’s baby. Lawyers argued that the doctor-ordered use of fortified formula, which is a necessary supplement to breast milk in pre-term babies, increased the risk of the baby developing necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a life-threatening intestinal disease. The lawyers claimed that Reckitt failed to warn of this increased risk. Abbott Laboratories faces a similar lawsuit in St. Louis County, a perennial Judicial Hellhole®.
The National Institutes of Health are unsure of exactly what causes NEC, but recent studies have found that ingestion of fortified baby formula doesn’t increase the risk. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the regulatory body that oversees the development of and labeling requirements for baby formula, does not require this warning. The reason – science doesn’t support the lawyers’ claims. FDA policy also prevents companies from unilaterally changing warning labels.
As is often the case with this type of litigation, plaintiffs’ lawyers are seeking to replace sound science with their own profit-seeking motives and theories. As companies weigh their options, they may be forced to remove their life-sustaining products from the market entirely to avoid overwhelming baseless liability that has become the norm in Judicial Hellholes®.
It is essential that judges see these cases for what they are – an attempted money grab by the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Judges must prioritize the health and safety of pre-term babies over the profit-seeking motives of the greedy trial lawyers.
