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FILE PHOTO: Johnson & Johnson baby powder bottles line a pharmacy shelf in New York on October 15, 2015. REUTERS / Lucas Jackson
March 28, 2019
By Tina Bellon
(Reuters) – A New Jersey jury on Wednesday admitted responsibility to Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit filed by a man who said his mesothelioma was caused by asbestos in the talc society.
The jury rendered its verdict unanimously in the Middlesex County Superior Court in New Brunswick, a few kilometers from J & J's headquarters, in the plaintiff's case, Ricardo Rimondi.
J & J, which faces some 13,000 Talc-related lawsuits in the country, denies that talc is the cause of cancer, claiming that numerous studies and tests by regulators around the world have shown that its talc was safe and asbestos free.
Johnson & Johnson also settled three other mesothelioma talcum cases in California, Oklahoma and New York on Wednesday, Chris Panatier, plaintiffs' attorney, told Reuters.
Panatier refused to provide more details, citing confidentiality agreements.
S addressing the settlements, J & J said in a statement: "There are unique situations in which a transaction is reasonable".
J & J stated that she was careful with the safety of her talc and would continue to vigorously defend the safety of baby powder.
"We have no organized program to deal with the Johnson Baby Powder cases, nor are we planning a settlement program," the company said.
Referring to the Rimondi verdict, J & J said the company's results in the talc litigation highlighted "decades of clinical evidence and scientific studies by medical experts from around the world" that support the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder.
The shares of J & J, slightly down, became positive after the announcement of the verdict of the jury and closed up 13 cents to $ 138.70.
Rimondi's lawyers, aged 58, could not be contacted for comment.
In 2016, Rimondi was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer related to exposure to asbestos.
He and his wife sued J & J in 2017. They alleged that Jim Rimondi's exposure to Baby Powder and Johnson's Shower to Shower, another powdered product containing talc sold by J & J in the past had provoked his illness.
The jury rendered its verdict in favor of the company after only half an hour of deliberation, according to a live stream of the proceedings of Courtroom View Network.
To date, the health care conglomerate has been the subject of 12 trials led by plaintiffs who said that asbestos in talc had caused their mesothelioma.
J & J has now been released from liability in four lawsuits, and five others have resulted in suspended juries and trial cancellations. Three juries found J & J liable, awarding a total of $ 172 million in damages. J & J is appealing these verdicts.
The majority of the 13,000 lawsuits against talc brought against the company involve claims for ovarian cancer. The juries in these cases hit society with verdicts of up to $ 4.69 billion.
Some of the ovarian cancer verdicts have been overturned on appeal for legal reasons, while the other appeals of the company are still pending.
"It remains true that on all verdicts against Johnson & Johnson concerning talc and having been the subject of an appeal, each of them has been annulled," he said. the company said in its statement.
Complainants' counsel recently focused on the argument that asbestos contamination in talc was the cause of ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.
In December, Reuters released a report detailing that the company knew that talc contained in its raw and finished powders was sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos from the 1970s to the early 2000s. have not been revealed to regulators or consumers.
J & J rejects the findings of the Reuters report, which it describes as inaccurate and indifferent. In highlighting the safety of her baby powder, the company claims that repeated powder testing has never been able to detect asbestos and that it cooperated fully and openly with the US Food and Drug Administration and others. global regulators.
(Report by Tina Bellon in New York, edited by Bill Berkrot and Noeleen Walder)
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