Reckitt Benckiser plunges after jury awards $60M damages in formula verdict

Shares of Reckitt Benckiser trading in New York have fallen nearly 20% after a jury in state court in St. Clair County, Illinois awarded a woman $60M in damages after ruling that the Reckitt’s Mead Johnson Nutrition unit failed to warn about the risks of necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, in its cow-milk-based Enfamil formula, which led to the death of the woman’s premature baby. The verdict came in the first case of its kind to go to trial in the U.S. noted Bloomberg. “The jury’s finding confirms what Mead Johnson folks already knew – that its formula dramatically increases the NEC risk. This is the first verdict in the US, but won’t be the last, unless baby formula makers accept responsibility for their misdeeds,” Ashley Keller, an attorney for the baby’s mother, Jasmine Watson, said Friday.