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INTERNATIONAL – A jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $ 4.69 billion to women who claimed asbestos in the company's talcum products, which led them to develop ovarian cancer.
The award of $ 4.14 billion in punitive damages in addition to the $ 550 million to compensate 22 women and their families for their losses has reduced the company's shares of 3.3 % in German trade.
in St. Louis, the trial court presented the first test of the plaintiffs claims regarding a link between asbestos and ovarian cancer in the use of powder for J & J's iconic baby. Asbestos cases are part of more than 9,000 claims alleging that J & J's talc products cause cancer.
The company will appeal, Carol Goodrich, a spokeswoman, said in an email. The verdict "was the product of a fundamentally unfair process that allowed the plaintiffs to present a group of 22 women, most of whom had no connection with Missouri, in one case, all alleging that They had developed ovarian cancer ". ] That each claimant and his family members received $ 25 million for their losses "regardless of their individual facts, and differences in applicable law, reflects that the evidence in the case was simply overwhelmed by the prejudice this type of procedure ".
"Multiple Errors"
The company's products do not contain asbestos and do not cause ovarian cancer, she added. Goodrich predicts the verdict would be reversed. "The multiple errors in this trial were worse than those of previous trials that were overturned."
J & J "will call until the cows return home, or until all the plaintiffs die," said the plaintiffs' attorney. an interview on Thursday. J & J should remove its talcum products from the market or "mark them with a serious warning," he said.
The German shares of the company fell from 3.59 euros to 105.48 euros (122.65 dollars) after closing at 127.76 dollars Thursday. New York. US stocks have fallen 8.6% since the beginning of the year.
The women also brought an action against a unit of Imerys SA, which supplied the talc to J & J. Imerys Talc America was installed before the trial on confidential terms. The company agreed to pay at least $ 5 million to settle the claims, according to two people familiar with the case.
While the biggest verdict in a US jury trial so far this year will make the headlines, the jury's decision According to Jean Eggen, a law professor at Widener University who teaches the cases Of collective tort, women's ovarian cancer could be a more important and long-term concern. "19659008," said Eggen. "This may be a harbinger of things to come and there are many more cases of ovarian cancer than powder-related asbestos cases. "
Welcome to St. Louis, the new hot spot of litigious tourists
Products have been contaminated with asbestos and have prevented this information from reaching the public," said Lanier, l & 39; counsel for plaintiffs, jurors in closing arguments J & J sought to protect the image of Baby Powder as "their sacred cow", he said.
The company has " "rigged" tests to avoid showing the presence of asbestos, said Lanier.If a test revealed the presence of asbestos, J & J sent it to a laboratory whose company knew that 39 he would produce different results, he told the jurors.
J & J denied any asbestos contamination or any rigged test. 's to suppress or ignore the tests did not make sense, said Peter A. Bicks, the company' s lawyer in Wednesday 's closures.
J & J "hired the country's best laboratories year after year" to test asbestos, he said. "So someone at J & J decides to expose the babies to asbestos? Why all the tests?" The mineral traces in the talc are not a proof of contamination by the baby. asbestos, said Bicks.These fibers are not asbestos, but harmless mineral fragments, he says.
"I am terminal"
Talc was not harmless, has said Toni Roberts, 61, in an interview after the verdict.Roberts was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014. She is undergoing chemotherapy in Roanoke, Virginia, but describes it as a palliative treatment. " None of the treatments work for me, "she said," I'm terminally ill. "
Roberts has two children and two grandchildren, including a third in December." But I'm not likely to be here, "she said, while she was happy to be part of a winning team, she said," This is not about That's what I wanted my life to end. "
After the announcement of punitive damages, the plaintiffs, their families and their lawyers gathered around the jurors, hugging and thanking them. "God bless you," said many plaintiffs in tears.
A juror, Evan Klene, 24, a financial badyst, said the jury had tried to "understand all of what these women had experienced."
He blamed J & J for his defense of asbestos. "We felt that the asbestos expert of the plaintiffs was a lot stronger than that of the defense," said Klene.
He said punitive damages of $ 4.14 billion came from a formula that included annual earnings of baby powder ($ 70 million).
At some point in the deliberations, the jury asked the judge for magic markers and ice cream sandwiches
Most of the women participating in the St. Louis trial used baby powder, but others were using Shower-to-Shower, another talc-based product from J & J. Valeant has now sold the product to Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. in 2012. Valeant now faces a lawsuit on body powder .
The women who sued, whose jobs range from school bus driver to executive director of a vocational rehabilitation program, come from states including Pennsylvania, California, Arizona and New York. Six of these women have died and their families have filed lawsuits for wrongful murder against J & J.
More than half of the 95-seat courtroom on Wednesday was occupied by plaintiffs and their families . Some were tears while Lanier discussed their troubles
. Listening to the complainants' accounts of their cancers was "heartbreaking," Bicks told the jurors on Wednesday. "But aside from sympathy, the plaintiffs did not come close to proving their case."
The lawsuits were initiated by the legal ad, Bicks said. The lawsuit was "an attempt to use sympathy in pursuit of a big payday of a defendant's deep pockets."
J & J faced several lawsuits in St. Louis over ovarian cancer claims, losing four of the first five lawsuits. Two of the plaintiffs' verdicts, one for $ 72 million and the other for $ 55 million, were wiped out on appeal on grounds of jurisdiction. The other two are on appeal, facing the same challenges of J & J.
The company has had a better record with judges than juries in cases of ovarian cancer. A separate award from the plaintiffs for $ 417 million by a Los Angeles jury in August was overturned by the trial judge who ruled that the evidence did not support the verdict. A New Jersey judge in 2016 blocked trials in that state by launching two trials, also finding a lack of scientific evidence.
J & J is also conducting a separate battle with plaintiffs who accuse the company's talcum products for their developing mesothelioma. In 1965, juries in California awarded $ 25.7 million to a woman who was diagnosed with mesothelioma for consistently using talc on children and herself. These decisions follow the decision of the New Jersey Jury in April, according to which J & J and Imerys America must pay $ 117 million to a banker
The punitive part of the St. Louis verdict may be particularly vulnerable to disputes or appeals after the trial.
Punitive damages are intended to deter corporations and other defendants. to engage in conduct that is considered scandalous, delusional or excessively reckless. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that such awards must be proportionate to the compensatory damages verdicts that justify them.
The High Court stated in 2002 that such penalties could be considered excessive if they exceeded a ratio of 10%. . In other cases, the judges upheld a punitive award four times greater than the compensatory damages.
According to the data compiled by Bloomberg, the verdicts pronounced by the judges are regularly reduced or erased after the decisions of the jury. An amount of $ 4 billion in punishment in St. Louis would likely be considered "excessive," said Anthony Sabino, a law professor at St. John's University in New York. "J & J has a good chance of overthrowing him."
The case is Ingham c. Johnson & Johnson, 1522-CC10417, Circuit Court, City of St. Louis, Missouri.
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