A Los Angeles jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who died from mesothelioma, finding the company responsible in the latest legal battle over its talc products and their alleged link to cancer.
The family of Mae Moore, a California resident who passed away at 88 in 2021, initiated legal action the same year. They contended that Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based baby powder products contained asbestos fibres, which they claimed led to her rare form of cancer.
The jury’s decision, delivered late on Monday, mandates Johnson & Johnson to pay $950 million in punitive damages, according to court documents.
This substantial award could face reduction upon appeal, as the U.S. Supreme Court has previously indicated that punitive damages should generally not exceed nine times compensatory damages.
Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice president of litigation, stated that the company intends to appeal immediately, describing the verdict as “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 said.
The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos, and do not cause cancer. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. Mesothelioma has been linked to asbestos exposure.
Trey Branham, one of the attorneys representing Moore’s family, said after the verdict that his team is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths.”
Johnson & Johnson is facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings. The number of lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma is a small subset of these cases, with the vast majority involving ovarian cancer claims.
Johnson & Johnson has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts.
Lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma were not part of the last bankruptcy proposal. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.
In the past year, Johnson & Johnson has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, but Monday’s is among the largest. The company has won some of the mesothelioma trials, including last week in South Carolina, where a jury found Johnson & Johnson not liable.
The company has been successful in reducing some of the awards on appeal, including in one Oregon case where a state judge granted Johnson & Johnson’s motion to throw out a $260 million verdict and hold a new trial.
