A court in Baltimore has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $1.56 billion to a Maryland woman who claimed that her use of the company’s baby powder caused her cancer. It is the largest award ever against J&J to a single talc plaintiff.
Jurors in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City held J&J liable for not warning Cherie Craft that its baby powder contained asbestos, which has been linked to cancer. The 59-year-old Craft was diagnosed with malignant peritoneal mesothelioma in January 2024.
J&J will appeal the verdict, which was characterized as “egregious and patently unconstitutional,” in a statement from its legal chief, Erik Haas.
“The verdict is squarely at odds—in result and amount—with the vast majority of other talc cases wherein the company has prevailed and expects the appellate court to reverse the verdict,” Haas added. “These lawsuits are predicated on ‘junk science,’ refuted by decades of studies, that demonstrate Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”
The award tops the previous high of $966 million, which was the figure arrived at by a California jury in October in a four-year-old case involving Mae Moore, who died of mesothelioma at age 88 in 2021, triggering a lawsuit by her three daughters.
Earlier this year, after J&J’s third failed attempt to resolve talc cases through a bankruptcy procedure, the company said it would take on the lawsuits in court. J&J faces more than 67,000 cases in the U.S. While it has prevailed in most of the lawsuits that have come to trial, there have been a few high-profile defeats.
Last week, a Minnesota jury awarded $65.5 million to a 37-year-old woman who claimed that her use of baby powder caused her to develop cancer in the lining of her lungs. Also, last week, a California jury returned a $40 million verdict in a case brought by two women with ovarian cancer.
J&J has had success in reducing many of the awards through appellate courts. In 2018, after a Missouri jury awarded 12 people diagnosed with ovarian cancer $4.7 billion, J&J’s appeal reduced the figure to $2.1 billion.
In the Baltimore case, the jury awarded $59.8 million in compensatory damages in addition to $1.5 billion in punitive damages to J&J and its subsidiary Pecos River Talc.
“Cherie Craft runs a non-profit where she pours her life into helping others. Her cancer was preventable. She used Johnson’s Baby Powder every day of her life until she was diagnosed with cancer,” Jessica Dean, a partner at Dean Omar Branham Shirley, said in a release.
Throughout the ordeal, J&J has said there is no conclusive evidence that its talc products contained asbestos or caused cancer. The company took them off the market, first in North America in 2020 and then the rest of the world in 2023. The company now sells a cornstarch version of its baby powder.