In February 2020 Johnson & Johnson were ordered by a New Jersey jury to pay $750 million in damages to four people who said the company’s baby powder gave them cancer. But Johnson & Johnson will only be on the hook for a penalty of roughly $185 million because of a New Jersey state law that limits punitive damages to five times the compensatory damages in a case. A different jury gave the plaintiffs $37.2 million in compensation in an earlier phase of the trial.
New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson said it will appeal both phases. The company complained in a statement of “numerous legal errors that subjected the jury to irrelevant information and prevented them from hearing meaningful evidence.”
The four plaintiffs in the case alleged that they got mesothelioma, a cancer affecting the lining of the lungs, because they used Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder, according to the Wall Street Journal. More than 16,000 plaintiffs have sued the company saying its powder caused mesothelioma or ovarian cancer and that Johnson & Johnson didn’t warn consumers properly.
A Reuters investigation published in 2018 found that Johnson & Johnson did not disclose the discovery of small amounts of asbestos in its talc over several decades. Asbestos can cause cancer when inhaled and has been linked to mesothelioma. The company dismissed the report at the time.
Johnson & Johnson recalled about 33,000 bottles of baby powder after a US Food and Drug Administration contractor found small amounts of asbestos in samples of baby powder. The company later blamed the FDA contractor for the scare, saying outside testing found no asbestos in baby powder samples.
Reuters Report
Facing thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc caused cancer, J&J insists on the safety and purity of its iconic product. But internal documents examined by Reuters showed that the company’s powder was sometimes tainted with carcinogenic asbestos and that J&J kept that information from regulators and the public.
J&J didn’t tell the FDA that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc – in one case at levels reported as “rather high.”
A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.
The earliest mentions of tainted J&J talc that Reuters found come from 1957 and 1958 reports by a consulting lab.
The documents also depict successful efforts to influence U.S. regulators’ plans to limit asbestos in cosmetic talc products and scientific research on the health effects of talc.
A small portion of the documents have been produced at trial and cited in media reports. Many were shielded from public view by court orders that allowed J&J to turn over thousands of documents it designated as confidential.
The World Health Organization and other authorities recognize no safe level of exposure to asbestos.
While most people exposed never develop cancer, for some, even small amounts of asbestos are enough to trigger the disease years later. Just how small hasn’t been established. Many plaintiffs allege that the amounts they inhaled when they dusted themselves with tainted talcum powder were enough.
The evidence of what J&J knew has surfaced after people who suspected that talc caused their cancers hired lawyers experienced in the decades-long deluge of litigation involving workers exposed to asbestos. Some of the lawyers knew from those earlier cases that talc producers tested for asbestos, and they began demanding J&J’s testing documentation.
In two in New Jersey and California – juries awarded big sums to plaintiffs who blamed asbestos-tainted J&J talc products for their mesothelioma.
A third verdict, in St. Louis, was a watershed, broadening J&J’s potential liability: The 22 plaintiffs were the first to succeed with a claim that asbestos-tainted Baby Powder and Shower to Shower talc, a long time brand the company sold in 2012, caused ovarian cancer, which is much more common than mesothelioma.
The jury awarded them $4.69 billion in damages. Most of the talc cases have been brought by women with ovarian cancer who say they regularly used J&J talc products as a perineal antiperspirant and deodorant.
Update from CNN – May 2020
(CNN)Johnson & Johnson is abandoning a product that it may be most identified with and has been selling for more than 100 years — talc-based baby powder.
The company said on its website that it had re-evaluated its products in light of the novel coronavirus in March and stopped shipping hundreds of items in the US and Canada. The purpose was to place a priority on its high-demand products and to make room for social distancing at its manufacturing and distribution facilities.
The company said it was permanently discontinuing about 100 products, including Johnson’s Baby Powder. This will only impact sales in the US and Canada.
It will continue to sell its products in other markets. The company says there has been a decline in demand for the powder.
Johnson & Johnson said it remains confident in the safety of the product, but there have been tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by women who have developed ovarian cancer after regular talcum powder use.
The cases are in various stages in courtrooms around the country. A handful of talcum powder companies have put warning labels on their products, but Johnson & Johnson argued such a label would be confusing, because it stood by its product.
The company said stores can continue selling its existing inventory until it runs out.
Analysis
It is very concerning that it took so long to uncover the truth about this product, begs the question how it gained FDA approval when it contained carcinogenic material. Equally concerning is the fact the company is allowed to continue selling the product outside of the US and Canada.
Q: How many people actually know about these lawsuits? I only stumbled across this story by chance whilst investigating the Johnson & Johnson $1bn deal to supply 100 million doses of the Coronavirus vaccine to the US!
But we can rest assured that J&J’s experimental “rushed to market” vaccine will go through a far more rigorous testing regime this time round – won’t it?
https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/johnson-johnson-hit-with-750m-verdict-in-baby-powder-lawsuit/
https://www.fool.com/news/2020/02/06/johnson-johnson-hit-with-750-million-fine-over-bab.aspx
I wrote my first article for Unity News Network on 30th December 2019, and I have been writing ever since – my library is now well in excess of 200 articles.
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