Johnson & Johnson’s failed attempts to resolve a mountain of talcum powder lawsuits through class-action bankruptcy settlements have left the company with the daunting prospect of litigating cases individually.
Tuesday, a Los Angeles court found J&J liable in a four-year-old case brought by a woman who died from mesothelioma in 2021. With its decision, a jury ordered the company to pay $966 million to the family of Mae Moore, with the award including $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages.
It is the largest figure ever awarded in a mesothelioma case against J&J, coming days after a jury rejected a lawsuit brought by a man in South Carolina, who claimed similarly that asbestos fibers in the company’s baby powder caused his cancer.
“We will immediately appeal this egregious and unconstitutional verdict that is directly at odds—in result and amount—with the vast majority of other talc cases wherein the Company has prevailed, including the defense verdict last week against the same plaintiff law firm that brought this baseless action,” Erik Haas, J&J’s litigation chief, said in a statement.
Haas also characterized the punitive damages awarded in the Los Angeles case as “unconstitutional.” The U.S. Supreme Court guidelines generally cap punitive damages at nine times the figure awarded for compensatory damages.
The jury ruled that J&J hid the risk of using its baby powder and that the concealment was a substantial factor in causing Moore’s mesothelioma. The jury agreed that J&J acted with malice or oppression by failing to protect consumers. It assessed non-economic damages for Moore's illness at $6 million, while the non-economic damages incurred by her three relatives who brought the complaint came to $10 million.
The lawsuit took four years to be resolved because of delays surrounding J&J's unsuccessful efforts to achieve a class-action bankruptcy settlement.
For years, the company has pointed to studies that indicate its baby powder does not contain asbestos or cause cancer. Haas also said Tuesday that the claims made by plaintiff lawyers are backed by “junk science.”
In May of this year, J&J filed a motion to reopen a lawsuit against Jacqueline Moline, M.D. It accuses her of falsifying information used in hundreds of talc cases. Moline has served as an expert in more than 200 talc cases. Her support of plaintiffs against J&J spans more than 20 years, and she has collected “millions of dollars” during that time, according to the company.
“The Company is confident that the Moore verdict will be reversed on appeal, for the same reasons as virtually all the other plaintiff verdicts rendered by juries similarly misled by the false narratives fed by experts on the plaintiff’s payroll,” Haas added in Tuesday’s statement.
J&J resuscitated its effort to discredit Moline a month after a Houston judge denied the company’s third attempt to resolve approximately 90,000 talcum powder lawsuits through a $9 billion Chapter 11 settlement.
With the decision, J&J said it was abandoning the bankruptcy route and would take on the cases in court. At that time, CEO Joaquin Duato pointed out in a conference call that the company had won 16 of the last 17 talc cases that went to trial.
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 ovarian cancer victims from 12 states in a 2018 decision in Missouri. That award was reduced by a state appeals court from an original figure of $4.7 billion.
Last year, an Illinois jury ordered J&J to pay the family of a woman who died of mesothelioma $45 million. Also last year in a mesothelioma case, a jury awarded $260 million to a woman in Oregon before a state judge overturned the verdict and granted the company a new trial.
J&J took its talc products off the market, first in North America in 2020 and then in the rest of the world in 2023. The company now sells a cornstarch version of its baby powder.