Abbott Will Pay About $670 Million to Settle the $495 Million Gill Verdict and Roughly 2,000 Other NEC Formula Claims — 23 Days After Telling the SEC It Had Set Aside Nothing. Claims for 12,700 Infants Remain

On August 20, 2026, Abbott Laboratories furnished a press release to the SEC as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K. The operative paragraph:

“Abbott has reached agreements with three law firms to resolve the Gill case and claims involving approximately 2,000 other individuals relating to the company’s specialty formulas for preterm infants. In July 2024, a St. Louis jury awarded the plaintiff in the Gill case $495 million in damages. Abbott appealed the verdict to the Missouri Court of Appeals in December 2024, but the appeal was denied. Rather than continuing to appeal or paying approximately $600 million, representing the Gill judgment plus accrued interest to date, Abbott entered into agreements to resolve the Gill case as well as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) claims asserted on behalf of approximately 2,000 additional infants for an aggregate amount of approximately $670 million.”

The release calls the agreements “a compromise of disputed claims and not in any way an admission of liability,” says Abbott “stands by the safety of these products,” and cites the FDA, NIH, CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the NEC Society as recognizing that the products are “safe and necessary” and that “there is no reliable scientific evidence that they cause NEC.” Those are Abbott’s characterizations of those bodies’ positions; we quote them as such.

Then the sentence that matters most for the families who are not among the 2,000: “Following these agreements, there are roughly 1,700 lawsuits pending in federal and state courts involving claims on behalf of approximately 12,700 individual infants.” Abbott adds that this population “includes claims on behalf of individuals who named both Abbott and Mead Johnson without identifying which manufacturer’s formula was administered, individuals diagnosed with NEC before receiving any formula, individuals who were never diagnosed with NEC, and individuals who appear in multiple lawsuits in different jurisdictions,” and that it “continues to work to identify and eliminate such claims.” That is a defense roadmap, published.

Abbott’s most recent quarterly report, the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, was filed on July 28, 2026. Its litigation note describes the NEC cases and then says: “Given the uncertainty as to the possible outcome in each of these matters, Abbott is unable to reasonably estimate a range of possible loss related to these matters and, therefore, no reserves have been recorded.” The same filing reports that “in May 2026, the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the Gill verdict,” and that Abbott “is seeking review of the ruling from the Supreme Court of Missouri.”

Twenty-three days later the company agreed to pay about $670 million. Nothing in the 8-K says the science changed. What the 8-K lists instead is a run of rulings Abbott describes as favorable everywhere except Gill: victories “in all three federal Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) bellwether cases”; a July 2026 Seventh Circuit decision affirming a pretrial judgment for Abbott in the first federal bellwether; a June 2026 Illinois Appellate Court decision reversing a $60 million verdict against Mead Johnson on the learned-intermediary doctrine; and a March 2026 Florida state-court dismissal on the same doctrine. The 10-Q puts it similarly: in the first three MDL bellwethers before the Northern District of Illinois, “Abbott prevailed on summary judgment,” while “outcomes in the state court cases have varied, ranging from a summary judgment ruling in Abbott’s favor to a plaintiff verdict awarding $495 million.”

Read together, the two filings describe a company that believed it was winning the war and had lost one battle it could no longer appeal away. The settlement buys out that battle and a block of claims around it, on terms Abbott says are “in its best long-term interest and represent a constructive step toward substantially resolving the overall litigation.”

The case is Margo Gill, on behalf of herself as next friend of her minor child R.D. v. Abbott Laboratories, et al., No. 2322-CC01251 in Missouri’s 22nd Judicial Circuit in St. Louis, tried before Judge Michael Noble. Trial opened July 9, 2024; on Friday, July 26, 2024, the jury returned $95 million in compensatory damages and $400 million in punitive damages. Abbott appealed in December 2024. According to news reports, the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, affirmed in early May 2026 (reported May 5), and on June 23, 2026 declined to transfer the case to the Missouri Supreme Court; Abbott said it would seek that court’s review directly. The 8-K now closes that chapter: rather than keep appealing or pay “approximately $600 million” with interest, it settled.

That one number reorganizes the whole announcement. The aggregate is about $670 million. The Gill judgment alone, Abbott says, stood at roughly $600 million with interest. Settlements are usually discounts, so nobody outside the room knows what Gill actually received — but the release ties the Gill case and the approximately $600 million figure together in the same sentence for a reason. Whatever the Gill family took, the approximately 2,000 other claims are sharing what is left, and what is left is unknown.

Divide $670 million by roughly 2,000 claims and you get about $335,000. Expect to see that figure everywhere this week. It is arithmetic, not a payout.

First, the 2,000 share the fund with the Gill case, which the same release prices at close to the entire total. Second, this is not a class action: there is no court-approved allocation plan, no tier chart filed on a docket, no administrator website, and nothing a family can look up. The agreements are between Abbott and three law firms — the 8-K does not name them — and how each firm divides its share among its clients is between that firm and those clients, typically under confidential individual releases with an opt-in threshold. Third, Abbott’s own filing says the pending population includes infants “never diagnosed with NEC” and duplicates across jurisdictions; a settling firm’s roster may be similarly uneven, and a per-claim average would be meaningless even if it were published.

We made the same point yesterday about the Bard hernia-mesh “point system”: an aggregate private settlement does not produce a public payout schedule, and any site that gives you one has invented it. The honest number here is the one Abbott gave — approximately $670 million, approximately 2,000 infants plus Gill — and the honest answer to “how much per child” is that Abbott is not saying and the firms are not required to.

Nothing in this announcement requires action from a family with a pending lawsuit. There is no claim form, no deadline and no registration for the public; if your case is with one of the three settling firms, your lawyer will contact you about the terms and your choice to accept or decline. If it is not, your case continues — in the federal MDL, In re: Abbott Laboratories, et al., Preterm Infant Nutrition Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3026 before Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer in the Northern District of Illinois, or in a state court.

Three things the filing signals for those cases. Abbott intends to keep pressing the learned-intermediary defense that reversed the $60 million Mead Johnson verdict in Illinois and won the Florida dismissal; it has now won three federal bellwethers and an appeal; and it has told investors, in writing, which categories of claims it intends to “identify and eliminate.” A settlement that resolves the one verdict that beat it, while leaving 12,700 infants’ claims pending, is a company buying down its worst risk, not conceding the litigation. Mead Johnson (Enfamil), the other defendant in many of these cases, is not part of these agreements.

One more thing the 10-Q said that the 8-K does not repeat: as of June 30, Abbott had recorded no reserve for any of this. The next 10-Q will show whether $670 million was the price of one bad verdict or the first line of a longer ledger.