After failing to resolve tens of thousands of talc lawsuits with three unsuccessful bankruptcy attempts, Johnson & Johnson is resuscitating another strategy—seeking to discredit an expert witness who has supported claimants who say that the company’s talc products caused their cancer.
In U.S. District Court in New Jersey, J&J has filed a motion to reopen a lawsuit against Jacqueline Moline, M.D. It accuses her of falsifying information used in hundreds of talc cases.
J&J originally filed the lawsuit in 2022, and it was dismissed in July of last year. But, three months later, J&J won (PDF) an appeal which allowed it to review data from Moline’s research. Based on that review, J&J says in its amended complaint that facts in the case have “shifted seismically” since the dismissal of the case.
Moline has served as an expert in more than 200 talc cases and has testified in 16 of them. Her support of plaintiffs against J&J spans more than 20 years, and, during that time, she has collected “millions of dollars,” according to the company.
In a 2019 research paper, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Moline wrote that talc is contaminated with asbestos and causes mesothelioma. It was the first research study to link asbestos in cosmetic talc to the deadly cancer. In the report, in which Moline studied 33 individuals who used talcum powder and later developed mesothelioma, she claimed that the participants had no other potential exposure to asbestos.
In doing her research, Moline and her company Northwell Health protected the identity of the 33 participants. J&J’s investigation since viewing the data indicates that at least half of the study subjects were exposed to other asbestos sources, such as insulation, piping and cigarettes, according to the company.
J&J argues the research is “completely false,” and it points out that Moline tried to bolster the impact of her research by claiming she would exclude any participants who had even “potential exposure” to asbestos.
Moline and Northwell Health did not respond to messages requesting comment. The law firm that represented Moline in the previous case, Marino, Tortorella & Boyle, also did not respond.
Four weeks ago, after a Houston judge denied J&J’s third attempt to resolve approximately 90,000 talcum powder lawsuits through a planned $9 billion Chapter 11 settlement, the company said it would abandon its efforts to rectify the cases through bankruptcy proceedings and is ready to take them on in court.
While J&J has touted its track record in the talc cases, the losses have been costly, such as a $2.1 billion award secured by 22 women from 12 states in a 2018 decision in Missouri. In addition, last year, an Illinois jury ordered J&J to pay the family of a woman who died of mesothelioma $45 million.
Throughout the ordeal, J&J has stuck to its argument that there is no conclusive evidence its talc products contained asbestos or caused cancer. The company took the products off the market, first in North America in 2020 and then the rest of the world in 2023. J&J now sells a cornstarch version of its baby powder.