Heartbreaking photos of twin boys who lived for just 25 days have been shared amid an emotional lawsuit in which their parents won $60 million in damages from a cow’s milk powder manufacturer.
A jury recently found that international company Mead Johnson was negligent for failing to properly warn Illinois mother Jasmine Watson about the link between its product and the bowel disease that killed her son Chance Dean in March 2020.
Chance weighed less than four pounds when he was born two months premature and spent his entire life in a neonatal intensive care unit near his parents’ home in southern Illinois.
On day 12, he was put on premature formula because Watson couldn’t produce enough breast milk for him and his twin brother Chase.
Heartbreaking final photos of twin baby Chance Dean, who lived for just 25 days, have been shared amid an emotional court case in which his parents were awarded $60 million in damages by a cow’s milk powder manufacturer
Jasmine Watson sits with her partner, Cedric Dean, and their son Chase, 4. The pillow features Chance Dean, who died of NEC in March 2020.
Watson initially chose to feed the boys a combination of her own milk and breast milk from donor banks. However, they were transferred to a hospital where donor milk was not available, and it was here that Chance began to deteriorate.
“It just seemed like he wasn’t feeling well,” Watson, 25, said. ABC news“He seemed like he was uncomfortable.”
Chance was diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a fatal intestinal disease that primarily affects premature babies. He underwent three surgeries to save his life.
But on the evening of March 28, 2020, Chance died in his mother’s arms.
“At that point I felt like the only thing I could do for him was be there for him,” Watson told ABC News. “I held him the whole time, until his heart stopped beating.”
Chase, who was given the same formula as Chance at the same time, did not develop an NEC.
Four years later, jurors were shown heartbreaking photos of Chance wearing a tiny blue knit hat and a feeding tube up his nose as his family sued international infant formula company Mead Johnson.
After a three-week trial, the jury found that Mead Johnson had been negligent and had failed to properly warn Watson that NEC was more common in bottle-fed, premature babies.
Watson’s attorneys called the victory a historic win for the state of Illinois.
“We are rightly confident that this is the largest settlement ever in St. Clair County and one of the most substantial in Illinois history,” they wrote in a press release.
In a statement from UK-based parent company Reckitt Benckiser, Mead Johnson said it was “surprised and deeply disappointed by the ruling” and pledged to “explore all options” to overturn the ruling.
“It is important to note that this is a single ruling in a single case and should not be extrapolated,” the statement said.
“We remain convinced that the claims made by the plaintiffs’ attorneys in this case are not supported by science or by experts in the medical community.”
Watson initially chose to feed the boys a combination of her own milk and breast milk from donor banks. However, they were transferred to a hospital where donor milk was not available, and it was here that Chance began to deteriorate
The company also told ABC News that the ruling “sets a dangerous precedent that disrupts the practice of medicine and the patient-doctor relationship.”
But the lawsuit marks the beginning of a flood of similar cases. More than 1,000 lawsuits are pending in the U.S., involving 7,000 families whose premature babies died or were seriously injured by NEC, according to ABC News.
Parents claim that cow’s milk-based formula for premature babies, developed by Mead Johnson and their main competitor Abbott, significantly increases the risk of NEC in babies.
Ben Whiting, a partner at Keller Postman, a national law firm that represented Watson and hundreds of other plaintiffs, told ABC News producers that the messaging needs to be clearer so parents understand the risks.
“We argue that at the very least, these formula manufacturers should be warning mothers, doctors, dietitians, nurses and hospitals about the risks of this terrible disease that occurs when premature babies switch from breast milk to cow’s milk,” Whiting said.