J&J To Pay $18.8M To Cancer Patient In Baby Powder Suit

Introduction

A Californian man claimed that exposure to Johnson & Johnson's baby powder caused him to get cancer, and the company must now pay him $18.8 million.

The company's efforts to resolve hundreds of similar lawsuits involving its talc-based products in U.S. bankruptcy court have been thwarted by a jury decision.

The plaintiff who sued J&J in a California state court in Oakland last year demanding financial damages was successful in getting his case heard by the jury. The plaintiff claims that heavy exposure to the company's talc beginning in his early years caused him to acquire mesothelioma, a fatal malignancy, in the tissue around his heart. The six-week trial was the first talc-related case that J&J, located in New Brunswick, New Jersey, had to deal with in over two years.

The jury decided that the plaintiff was entitled to damages to cover his medical expenses and agony and suffering, but they decided against punishing the firm with punitive damages. Thanks to a bankruptcy court ruling freezing much of J&J's talc case, the plaintiff won't be able to collect the judgment anytime soon.

In a statement, J&J's vice president of litigation said the company will appeal the decision since it was incompatible with decades of independent scientific reviews that found Johnson's Baby Powder to be safe, free of asbestos, and unable to cause cancer.

J&J's attorneys said there was no proof that the plaintiff had ever been exposed to contaminated talc or that his specific kind of mesothelioma could be linked to asbestos in their closing remarks to the jury on July 10. In their final remarks, the plaintiff's attorneys charged J&J with covering up asbestos contamination for decades in a "despicable" manner.

In his testimony before the jury in June, the plaintiff said that if he had been informed that J&J's talc included asbestos, as his case claims, he would have avoided it. The mother of the plaintiff spoke before the jury, claiming that she often applied J&J's baby powder to her son during his infancy and boyhood. She sobbed as she talked about her son's condition.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed by individuals who claim that J&J's baby powder and other talc products occasionally contained asbestos and contributed to the development of ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. According to J&J, its talc products are risk-free and free of asbestos, which has been associated with mesothelioma.

LTL Management, a J&J company, filed for bankruptcy in Trenton, New Jersey, in April with a plan to pay $8.9 billion to resolve more than 38,000 complaints and stop further litigation. After a federal appeals court rejected an earlier offer, it was the company's second effort to settle talc claims in bankruptcy.

The U.S. Chief Bankruptcy Judge, who is in charge of LTL's Chapter 11, allowed this trial to go on despite the fact that most litigation is put on hold during bankruptcy procedures since the plaintiff is only anticipated to survive for a limited time.

Asbestos litigants are requesting that LTL's most recent bankruptcy filing be dismissed since this type of mesothelioma is incredibly uncommon and makes his case distinct from the vast majority of cases now pending against J&J. They contend that the file was made in bad faith in an effort to shield the business from legal action.

In contrast to trial courts, which they have compared to a "lottery" in which some litigants receive significant damages while others receive nothing, J&J and LTL have contended that bankruptcy distributes settlement compensation to plaintiffs more fairly, effectively, and equitably.

The expenses of J&J's talc-related judgments, settlements, and legal fees have reportedly totaled roughly $4.5 billion, according to bankruptcy court records.

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