Judge Demolishes Corporate Law Firm After They LIED To Jury In Baby Formula Case

A judge in Missouri has vacated a jury verdict in favor of the makers of baby formula after he determined that the law firm representing the formula makers repeatedly lied throughout the trial, including misleading the jury. This is a major victory for the parents of infants that either died or suffered irreparable damage from a condition called NEC that was caused by baby formula from Abbot and Mead. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A judge in Missouri has vacated the only victory that Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson have had while facing NEC lawsuits. Now that alone is a big deal for the plaintiffs. Obviously, these NE Cs are something that we have talked about at length on America's lawyer. Uh, both myself and Mike Papantonio have talked about 'em, and I have done segments on Ring of Fire about them in the past as well. But for those who may not know, before I even get into the issue of the judge, these NEC lawsuits are being brought by families who had preterm infants that were fed this formula that is a cow's milk based formula from Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson. What these families didn't know when they were giving this formula to their preterm babies is that it can cause a condition called NEC or Necrotizing Inter Colitis. What that basically means is it shuts down the digestive tract of many of these infants.

It can lead to serious infections. It leads to an enormous amount of pain, and in some instances, many instances actually it's led to the death of the child. It is a horrific, painful, slow death caused by ingesting this formula. And so far up until this one case in Missouri, the plaintiffs had prevailed. They have secured more than $500 million in verdicts on behalf of these families except in this one trial because apparently those lawyers who were handling the trial in Missouri, according to the judge, decided to lie their faces off to the jury and break court rules in order to finally win a case. But the judge understood that the judge saw through it, and the judge vacated that only victory that these companies, Abbott and Mead have so far. But it's horrible. What these uh, lawyers did is absolutely should be disbarred by the, here, here, let me read this from this report. Abbott's lead attorney was sanctioned and barred from closing arguments for repeated bad faith violations of court orders. At the time, the trial judge accused Abbott of trying to provoke a mistrial rather than face the evidence. Now with the verdict overturned, it's clear why the defense was never playing fair to begin with the judge. Judge Noble found that Abbott and Mead quote repeatedly introduced inadmissible evidence to mislead the jurors falsely claimed the plaintiff wanted all formula banned, creating fear-based bias, used improper expert testimony and FDA arguments despite

Prior court rulings and exploited the mother's marijuana use without any proof that it caused NEC. These lawyers had to resort to lying and deception in order to get one victory that is now taken away from them. That tells you how strong this case is and how dangerous these products are. If you can't win your case on the merits, if you have to resort to breaking court rules, trying to mislead jurors, then you shouldn't be a lawyer. And of course, your company should never win a lawsuit. This story, of course, also has many other layers. One of the lawyers that actually represented Abbott in some of these cases, I don't know if he represented them in the Missouri case or not, but it's a man that I've talked about in the past called Kyle Diamantas. Kyle Diamantas was recently appointed to be the new head of food safety, including baby formula at the FDA, and he is supposed to be working closely with HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

On this particular issue, considering the fact that Mr. Diamantas has represented these companies, he's one of the lawyers that has gone and tried to argue that they did nothing wrong. I don't know that we're gonna see the FDA take any real meaningful action on this, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Mr. Diamantas has seen the error of his ways.