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A California jury awarded $ 29 million to a woman who said that asbestos in Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder products had caused cancer.
Wednesday's verdict, in California's Superior Court in Oakland, marks the latest defeat of the health conglomerate to face more than 13,000 lawsuits across the country.
The company announced that it would appeal, citing "serious procedural and evidentiary errors" during the trial, claiming that the woman's lawyers had basically failed to demonstrate that her baby powder contained alcohol. ;asbestos. The company did not provide further details on the alleged errors.
"We respect the legal process and reiterate that jury verdicts are not medical, scientific or regulatory conclusions about a product," Johnson & Johnson said in a statement.
The New Jersey-based company denies that its talc causes cancer, claiming that numerous studies and tests done by regulators around the world have shown it's safe and asbestos-free.
The lawsuit was brought by Terry Leavitt, who reported using Johnson's baby powder and shower shower – another powder containing talcum powder sold in the past – in the 1960s and 1970s. He was diagnosed with Mesothelioma in 2017. This was the first of more than a dozen Talc business against the company were scheduled for trial in 2019. The nine-week trial began January 7 and included the testimony of nearly a dozen experts on both sides.
The jury deliberated for two days before delivering its verdict.
The jurors concluded that the talc-based products used by Leavitt were defective and that the company had not warned consumers of the health risks by awarding $ 29.4 million in damages to Leavitt and Leavitt. her husband. The jury refused to award punitive damages.
"Another jury rejected J & J's misleading claims that his talc was asbestos-free," said Leavitt's lawyer, Moshe Maimon, in a statement released on Wednesday. "J & J's internal documents that the jury saw revealed once again the shocking truth of decades of concealment, deception and concealment by J & J."
Leavitt is the first case of talc to be the subject of a lawsuit since Reuters published in December a report stating that J & J knew that talc in its raw and finished powders was sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Test results not to disclose to regulators or consumers.
The Leavitt lawsuit originally included talc supplier Johnson & Johnson, Imerys Talc America, a unit of Imerys SE, as co-defendant. Judge Brad Seligman, who supervised the trial, told the jurors in February that the company was no longer part of the case after seeking Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy under the weight of the Talc litigation, which suspended the lawsuit. prosecution.
While prior talc litigation was presumed to be attributable to talc itself, plaintiffs' lawyers have recently focused on challenging asbestos contamination of talc cancer and mesothelioma, a form of cancer linked to cancer. exposure to asbestos.
In 11 cases so far, three have resulted in victories for the plaintiffs, awarding damages of up to $ 4.69 billion in a verdict of several plaintiffs regarding ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson won three more cases and five more resulted in suspended juries.
The company appealed all of the plaintiffs' verdicts and was satisfied that the verdicts would be quashed on appeal.
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