A California jury has awarded $29m to a woman who said asbestos in
Johnson & Johnson’s talcum-powder-based products caused her
cancer.Wednesday’s verdict, in California superior court in Oakland,
marks the latest defeat for the healthcare conglomerate facing more than
13,000 talc-related lawsuits nationwide.raw Testosterone decanoate powder
The
company said it would appeal, citing “serious procedural and
evidentiary errors” during the trial, saying lawyers for the woman had
fundamentally failed to show its baby powder contains asbestos. The
company did not provide further details of the alleged errors.“We
respect the legal process and reiterate that jury verdicts are not
medical, scientific or regulatory conclusions about a product,” Johnson
& Johnson said in a statement.
The New Jersey-based company
denies that its talc causes cancer, saying numerous studies and tests by
regulators worldwide have shown that it is safe and asbestos-free.
The
lawsuit was brought by Terry Leavitt, who said she used Johnson’s Baby
Powder and Shower to Shower – another powder containing talc sold in the
past – in the 1960s and 1970s and was diagnosed with mesothelioma in
2017. It was the first of more than a dozen talc cases against the
company scheduled for trial in 2019. The nine-week trial began on 7
January and included testimony from nearly a dozen experts on both
sides.The jury deliberated for two days before delivering its verdict.
Jurors
found the talc-based products used by Leavitt were defective and that
the company had failed to warn consumers of the health risks, awarding
$29.4m in damages to Leavitt and her husband. The jury declined to award
punitive damages.
“Yet another jury has rejected J&J’s
misleading claims that its talc was free of asbestos,” said Moshe
Maimon, a lawyer for Leavitt, in a statement on Wednesday. “The internal
J&J documents that the jury saw, once more laid bare the shocking
truth of decades of cover-up, deception and concealment by J&J.”
Leavitt’s
was the first talc case to go to trial since Reuters published a report
in December detailing that J&J knew that the talc in its raw and
finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos
from the 1970s into the early 2000s – test results it did not disclose
to regulators or consumers.
Leavitt’s trial originally included
Johnson & Johnson talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, a unit of
Imerys SE, as a co-defendant. Judge Brad Seligman, who oversaw the
trial, told jurors in February the company was no longer part of the
case after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under the
weight of the talc litigation, which stayed lawsuits against it.While
earlier talc lawsuits alleged talc itself causes ovarian cancer,
plaintiffs’ lawyers have more recently focused on arguing asbestos
contamination in talc caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, a form of
cancer linked to asbestos exposure.
In 11 cases so far, three
have resulted in wins for plaintiffs, awarding damages as high as
$4.69bn in a July 2018 multi-plaintiff ovarian cancer verdict. Johnson
& Johnson won three other cases and another five ended in hung
juries.
The company has appealed against all of the plaintiff
verdicts, and the company said it was confident the verdicts would be
overturned on appeal.
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