Reuters
—
A Los Angeles jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966 million to the household of a girl who died from mesothelioma, discovering the corporate liable in the latest trial alleging its talc merchandise trigger cancer.
The household of Mae Moore, a California resident who died at age 88 in 2021, sued the corporate the identical yr, claiming J&J’s talc child powder merchandise contained asbestos fibers that induced her uncommon cancer. The jury late on Monday ordered J&J (JNJ) to pay $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, in accordance to court docket filings.
The verdict may very well be decreased on attraction because the US Supreme Court has discovered that punitive damages ought to typically be not more than 9 occasions compensatory damages.
Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice-president of litigation, stated in an announcement that the corporate plans to instantly attraction, calling the decision “egregious and unconstitutional.”
“The plaintiff lawyers in this Moore case based their arguments on ‘junk science’ that never should have been presented to the jury,” Haas stated.
The firm has stated its merchandise are secure, don’t comprise asbestos and don’t trigger cancer. J&J stopped promoting talc-based child powder in the United States in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. Mesothelioma has been linked to asbestos publicity.
Trey Branham, one of many attorneys representing Moore’s household, stated after the decision that his group is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths.”
J&J is going through lawsuits from greater than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they had been identified with cancer after utilizing child powder and different talc merchandise, in accordance to court docket filings. The variety of lawsuits alleging talc induced mesothelioma is a small subset of those instances, with the overwhelming majority involving ovarian cancer claims.
J&J has sought to resolve the litigation by chapter, a proposal that has been rejected 3 times by federal courts.
Lawsuits alleging talc induced mesothelioma weren’t a part of the final chapter proposal. The firm has beforehand settled a few of these claims however has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in current months.
In the previous yr, J&J has been hit with a number of substantial verdicts in mesothelioma instances, however Monday’s is among the many largest. The firm has received a number of the mesothelioma trials, together with final week in South Carolina, the place a jury discovered J&J not liable.
The firm has been profitable in lowering a number of the awards on attraction, together with in one Oregon case the place a state choose granted J&J’s movement to throw out a $260 million verdict and maintain a brand new trial.