Massachusetts will receive $1.9 million from Abbott Laboratories as part of a $385 million settlement between the maker of the popular infant formula Similac and federal and state governments.
The settlement was announced on Monday by the US Justice Department and followed a whistleblower lawsuit filed in 2022 in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan. The whistleblower alleged that Abbott knowingly sold formula manufactured in a plant in Sturgis, Mich., that did not meet safety requirements.
The same year that the whistleblower suit was filed, Abbott began a recall of powdered formulas manufactured at the plant after federal officials linked the products to four infants who were hospitalized with rare bacterial infections, two of whom died.
Last December, the attorneys general of Massachusetts and five other states joined in the lawsuits against Abbott.
“Parents should never have to question whether the food they are feeding their babies is safe,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement on Thursday. “Abbott’s failure to maintain its formula in compliance with state and federal regulations not only put families at risk but resulted in the Commonwealth paying for formula that did not meet key safety standards.”
The $1.9 million will reimburse MassHealth, which is the joint Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program for the state, and another state program that supplements federal Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition funding. Both programs paid for the formula for families that met certain qualifications.
Abbott, which is based in a suburb of Chicago, said Monday that the settlement did not represent any finding of fault or liability. It said no unopened, distributed Abbott infant formulas ever tested positive for the bacteria that sickened the babies, including containers from the homes of the infants who were hospitalized.
The federal and state governments alleged that Abbott failed to maintain its manufacturing equipment, failed to control the presence of water that put products at risk of microorganism contamination, and failed to disclose test results indicating the presence of contaminants in response to requests from the Food and Drug Administration.
In addition to recalling the formula, Abbott closed its Michigan plant after investigators found traces of potentially deadly bacteria there. The recall and the plant closure exacerbated a national shortage of baby formula that had begun with pandemic supply chain problems.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com.