![]() ![]() (Its advantages include being less expensive than the ready-to-pour variety.) Academic and government studies have repeatedly found that powdered formula can be a breeding ground for a type of bacteria, Cronobacter sakazakii, that in babies can cause meningitis. Unlike bottled formula, the powdered version is not sterile. offices, said the firm’s only goal “was to prove the truth that Abbott’s infant formula was not contaminated when it was opened.”Ī few large companies control the $2.1 billion market for infant formula - none more so than Abbott, which before this year’s crisis accounted for nearly half of formula sales. Kevyn Orr, the partner in charge of Jones Day’s U.S. Jones Day lawyers told me the firm didn’t do anything unusual or untoward as it sought to fend off families like Jeanine’s. But as the Abbott cases illustrate, when the resources and tactics of Big Law are brought to bear against poor families and their overwhelmed lawyers, the results tend to be lopsided. When the opposing sides shower each other in paperwork, discovery requests, venue changes and objections, it usually resembles a fair fight. Often Jones Day dukes it out with other giant law firms that are also representing enormous companies. Reynolds, Purdue Pharma, General Motors and Smith & Wesson. Jones Day - a 129-year-old law firm with roots in Cleveland and a powerful political practice in Washington - is a goliath in corporate litigation, having represented companies like R.J. Much of this, of course, comes down to good lawyering. “These are tough, tough cases,” said William Marler, a Seattle lawyer who has sued companies for spreading food-borne illnesses. Several lawyers who have worked on baby-formula cases said they were not aware of a plaintiff ever beating Abbott or its competitors at trial. One big reason is that Abbott and its lawyers, at times deploying scorched earth legal tactics, have repeatedly beaten back attempts to hold the company liable. Until recently, however, the pattern largely lurked below the public and political radar. Over the years, newborns on rare occasions have fallen sick or died after being fed powdered formula. The scrutiny was new, but the phenomenon wasn’t. Even if the materials were only tangentially related to this particular case, the plaintiffs’ lawyers would need to spend countless hours poring over the documents to see what they contained. ![]() Judge Bennett figured that to protect an important client, the company’s outside lawyers, from the international law firm Jones Day, were trying to snow their opponents with tens of thousands of pages of paperwork. The accusations in the lawsuit posed a threat to Abbott, which had staked its reputation on being family-friendly and devoted to health and safety. The boxes cluttering Judge Bennett’s chambers were filled in large part with evidence that Abbott’s lawyers wanted to be able to introduce at the upcoming trial.Īfter more than two decades on the federal bench, Judge Bennett had a pretty good guess as to what was going on. Jeanine couldn’t speak, sit up or even swallow, and the tragedy had nearly destroyed her family. Judge Bennett was presiding over a case in which Abbott Laboratories, the sprawling health care company that dominated the market for infant formula, was being sued on behalf of a girl, Jeanine Kunkel, who five years earlier had suffered severe brain damage after consuming the company’s powdered formula. His immediate thought was that another judge might be moving in.Īnother judge was not moving in. A surprise awaited him as he entered his office: Cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere. He’d been out of town for a speaking engagement and was hoping to catch up on work. Early on a Saturday morning in 2013, Mark Bennett, a federal judge, walked into his chambers in the courthouse in Sioux City, Iowa.
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