A recent Illinois appellate court decision has drawn a clear line in a massive, consolidated product liability dispute involving infant formula, ruling that while some local cases can stay in Cook County, lawsuits filed by out-of-state families must be moved elsewhere. The ruling marks a significant victory for the defendants, Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson & Company, in their effort to shift the venue for the majority of the claims.
The consolidated case involves 29 plaintiffs suing Abbott and/or Mead Johnson, alleging that the companies failed to warn about the serious risks associated with their infant formulas, leading premature babies to develop necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a devastating intestinal disease.
Two Tiers of Litigation: Intrastate vs. Interstate
The core of the issue revolved around the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens—a principle allowing a court to decline jurisdiction if another location is significantly more convenient for the parties and serves the ends of justice better.
The Illinois Appellate Court, First District, Sixth Division, had to address two distinct groups of plaintiffs:
1. Intrastate Plaintiffs (Six Cases): These plaintiffs sued both Abbott and Mead Johnson. The defendants sought to transfer these cases from Cook County to other Illinois counties where the infants were born.
2. Interstate Plaintiffs (Twenty-Three Cases): These plaintiffs sued only Abbott, and the defendants sought to dismiss these cases entirely, favoring the states where the infants were born.
In a split decision, the appellate court found that the Cook County Circuit Court did not abuse its discretion in denying the transfer motions for the six intrastate cases. However, the court found the circuit court *did* abuse its discretion by keeping the 23 interstate cases in Illinois.
Justice Gamrath, writing for the court, stated that the trial court must balance public and private interest factors, but the defendant bears the burden of proving that the chosen forum (Cook County) is inconvenient and another forum is significantly better.
Deference to the Plaintiffs’ Choice
Generally, a plaintiff’s choice of forum is given substantial deference. However, this deference lessens when the plaintiff is “foreign to the chosen forum” and the events giving rise to the litigation did not occur there.
The court noted that only one plaintiff, Wordlaw, actually resided in Cook County, meaning her choice received substantial deference. The other 28 plaintiffs, who resided out of state or in other Illinois counties, were afforded less deference.
Defendants argued that this lesser deference should have been “far less,” suggesting the plaintiffs were merely “forum shopping.” The court acknowledged that while forum shopping is frowned upon, the plaintiffs had plausible reasons for choosing Cook County, including the location of attorneys, Abbott’s Illinois headquarters, and Cook County’s consolidated discovery schedule for complex product liability cases.
Private Interests: Evidence and Witnesses Tip the Scales for Interstate Cases
When analyzing the private interest factors—such as convenience of parties, access to evidence, and cost of witnesses—the court saw a critical distinction between the local and out-of-state plaintiffs.
For the intrastate transfers, the court found that evidence and witnesses were sufficiently scattered across multiple Illinois counties, including Cook, meaning no single county had a predominant connection that would strongly favor transfer.
The situation was drastically different for the 23 interstate plaintiffs suing Abbott.
Testimonial Evidence: Abbott provided evidence that the vast majority of employees involved in the research, design, development, and promotion of Similac were based in Ohio, where the product was largely managed. While Cook County had two key research employees, the crucial factor was the out-of-state medical witnesses.
The plaintiffs’ claims heavily relied on allegations that Abbott failed to warn out-of-state hospitals and healthcare providers about the formula’s dangers. The court found that compelling these out-of-state doctors and nurses to travel to Illinois for trial posed a substantial burden. Furthermore, Illinois courts lack the power of compulsory process to *force* unwilling third-party witnesses from other states to appear, making their in-person testimony difficult to secure.
“Given plaintiffs’ claims about what the out-of-state healthcare providers were told, warned of, and knew about the risks of Abbott’s formula, the providers’ locations and difficulty in securing their in-person testimony at trial in Cook County weigh heavily in favor of dismissal,” the opinion noted.
Public Interests: Burden on Cook County Residents
The public interest factors also heavily favored dismissing the interstate cases. These factors include the local interest in deciding controversies and the unfairness of imposing jury duty burdens on local residents.
The court reasoned that while Abbott’s corporate headquarters is in Illinois, this fact alone cannot justify burdening Cook County residents with the expense and duty of hearing complex cases that arose entirely outside of Illinois.
“What we held in *Lutzenkirchen* applies equally here,” the court stated, referring to a previous ruling emphasizing that jurors should resolve disputes affecting their communities, not those rooted in unrelated jurisdictions.
The court found a strong local connection for the intrastate cases (due to treatment in Cook County hospitals and Mead Johnson’s former presence), but the connection for the 23 interstate plaintiffs was deemed “tenuous.” The primary events—infant births, treatment, and alleged misrepresentations to medical staff—occurred entirely in other states.
The Final Order
The appellate court affirmed the denial of the motions to transfer the six intrastate cases, concluding the balance of factors did not strongly favor moving them out of Cook County.
However, the court reversed the denial of the motions for the 23 interstate plaintiffs. These cases are to be dismissed, but conditionally. The dismissal is conditioned upon Abbott agreeing to accept service of process in the new forums (where the infants were born) and waiving any statute of limitations defenses. If Abbott fails to comply, the plaintiffs can reinstate their cases in Cook County.
This decision ensures that the majority of the out-of-state claims will now proceed in the forums geographically closest to where the alleged injuries occurred and where the key medical evidence resides.