Baby formula maker Abbott Laboratories agreed to pay nearly $385 million to resolve a civil False Claims Act case with the Justice Department and some states stemming from a Cronobacter bacterial contamination at one of its plants in Michigan that manufactures powdered baby formula, the department announced on Monday.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to close a parallel criminal investigation, CBS News previously reported.
Federal prosecutors originally tried to pursue felony charges and had the support of Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, but senior DOJ leadership would not allow the case to proceed.
A senior DOJ official told CBS News in February that the department felt that a civil False Claims Act resolution was "the best mechanism to achieve accountability, deterrence and protection of the public" in the matter.
The civil False Claims Act case alleged that the company caused government programs to purchase powdered infant formula alleged by the government to have been made "in an environment that put the products at unacceptable risk of microorganism contamination and significantly impacted the products' reliability, quality, and safety."
"No company should be gambling on the health and safety of our nation's infants by allowing unsanitary conditions to persist at a facility manufacturing baby formula," said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward in a statement.
The...
In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But fo...