Baby Formula Caught Up in Class Action
- Author: Jeffrey Simmons
- Posted: 2024-10-14
Every single day in America, lawyers are out there trying to round people up to file class action lawsuits against big corporations. Sometimes these lawsuits are for pretty petty reasons, and sometimes it's an issue that was gross negligence by the corporation. When speaking about one of America's latest class action suits, against PBM Nutritionals and baby formula, you realize that this is an area where a company deserves to be sued if they truly showed negligence with baby formula. Mothers everywhere put the lives of their babies in the hands of these companies, and to think that there's any sort of negligence involved is just frightening. Thankfully, this class action doesn't have anything to do with sick babies or poisoned ingredients. The suit alleges that PBM lied on their containers about how many liquid servings the formula powder produced.
While not dangerous or scary, this move by PBM was done strictly to make money, and at a time where baby formula is hard to come by in the first place. Mothers purchased the formula expecting that it made X amount of servings, only to find the formula was gone ahead of schedule. This was a serious problem. To date, however, PBM has only offered up a settlement of $2 million, and that's very likely final. PBM is a subsidiary of Perrigo, which is located in Ireland and earns billions of dollars in revenue every year. $2 million seems like a slap in the face to all the others who found that the formula they purchased did not meet its claims. Though for cases like this, which are just considered "mislabeling," despite how egregious it seems with babies involved, very low settlements are fairly standard. The class members don't end up receiving much money at all in these instances.
The news about this case specifically is a bit confusing. It's unclear as to whether or not $2 million is the final number. This is because the class is still looking to expand. The lawyers suing PBM are still seeking people who purchased PBM formula from Walmart, Target, Sam's Club, and other stores. If that $2 million is final, then there's likely to be no money at all to spread around once the class exponentially grows. Perhaps a few dollars, with the lawyers earning a good payday of around $600,000.
More than anything, parents were incredibly angry to find that PBM had been lying on its labels, by upwards of 12%, in order to profit more. This was found out right after one of the nation's largest formula plants was forced to shut down due to bacterial concerns, and exports from Europe had stopped due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So, for Americans looking to feed their babies, there was a massive shortage, and then a company looking to profit from it all. On principle alone, many believe this settlement should be in the hundreds of millions.
Big Corporations Are Often Protected
Unfortunately for Americans who have been wronged by massive corporations, they're very unlikely to receive any justice. You'll hear a lot about how certain big companies had to pay a lot of money, but that's rare, and it typically doesn't affect the companies all that much. Pfizer, for instance, has previously had to pay out billions of dollars in lawsuits. However, Pfizer is not only directly in bed with most of America's government, but they quite literally are the biggest corporate media sponsor on the planet. Every other news show you watch is brought to you by Pfizer. So a corporation like this makes exponentially more from the government than they'll ever have a pay out. They're protected. The same goes for some baby formula companies. The government gets kickbacks from its WIC program, and they have approved vendors. This seems very immoral, but it's perfectly legal and the government brags about it.
Every single year, you will hear some politicians campaigning about needing to force corporations to play by the rules, to pay more taxes, to pay more in salaries, etc; but when you look harder into it, you'll find the regulations written by the government are always in favor of the corporations and to the immediate detriment of normal Americans. It's been that way for a very long time.
You can contact the lawyers involved in the case for this baby formula settlement, but there won't be a lot of money available. These companies never seem to have to pay what they should.
