Sudden Talc-Cancer Settlements Aren’t J&J’s Usual Style
Johnson & Johnson took the unusual step of settling two women’s claims that its talc-based products caused their asbestos-linked cancers rather than let juries decide the cases, opening a new front in the growing litigation against the world’s largest maker of health-care products.
Jurors in state court in Oklahoma City Wednesday had spent about three hours weighing whether J&J’s baby powder was a factor in a 77-year-old’s peritoneal mesothelioma when a judge announced the two sides had cut a deal. Details of the accord weren’t made public.
On the same day, J&J also reached a confidential settlement that cut short a trial in Los Angeles over a 36-year-old’s claims that products she’d used since childhood led to her mesothelioma, an asbestos-linked cancer.
Unlike some pharma companies, J&J isn’t known for quickly settling cases, so resolving two in close proximity may indicate executives and lawyers are looking at the talc cases differently, said Jean Eggen, a Widener University law professor who teaches about mass-tort cases.
“It looks like they have decided to cut their losses in some cases and move on,” she said. “Often times, that kind of individual scrutiny will produce settlements.”
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J&J denied any shift in its litigation strategy, standing by its position that there’s no asbestos in its talc-based products and that it hasn’t concealed from consumers the health risks of using baby powder.
“In litigation of every nature there are one-off situations where settlement is a reasonable alternative,” Kim Montagnino, a J&J spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement. “We do not have any organized program to settle Johnson’s Baby Powder cases, nor are we planning a settlement program.”
The settlements add another layer of complexity to the company’s mixed record in the talc-cancer cases it has fought across the U.S. On Wednesday, J&J prevailed in a New Jersey trial two weeks after a jury in Oakland, California, hit it with $29 million in damages. The company still faces more than 13,000 suits blaming its talc-based products for causing mesothelioma and ovarian cancer. More than two-dozen trials have been scheduled in U.S. courts this year.
Several of the early trials resulted in plaintiffs’ verdicts, including a $4.69 billion victory in St. Louis in 2018 for 22 women with ovarian cancer. But J&J has been able to win reversals of three of the first five jury awards.
The cases that have settled so far all involve mesothelioma. Patients generally don’t live long after a diagnosis. The death rate and the ties to prior asbestos litigation also means these claims get quicker trial dates. Nearly all the talc trials set for 2019 involve mesothelioma victims.
Sharon Pipes, the Oklahoma plaintiff, was diagnosed in 2017 with peritoneal mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the abdomen. Experts have linked that illness to asbestos exposure. She used Johnson & Johnson’s talc products for 50 years, her attorneys said at trial.
One juror said outside court that the 11-woman, one-man panel was leaning toward finding J&J liable for its powders helping to cause Pipes’ cancer.
“We were one or two short,” of getting the nine votes needed for a verdict, said juror Frances Harris, 65, a speech pathologist from Edmond, Oklahoma.
Harris said she was among those who thought J&J should be held accountable for not warning about the presence of asbestos in some of its talc powders.
“What convinced me were all of the internal Johnson & Johnson documents,” she said. “They said in their own words that they knew there was asbestos but they kept saying, ‘Zero tolerance for asbestos.”’
In the Los Angeles case, lawyers for Gail Koretoff told a state-court jury in Santa Monica Monday she developed mesothelioma after being exposed to asbestos particles in the company’s baby powder and other talc products. J&J’s lawyers disputed that claim, saying years of tests found none of the carcinogen in the products.
The company has also won recent defense verdicts in cases alleging links between baby powder and mesothelioma, including the one Wednesday in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Some of the verdicts include awards against J&J’s talc supplier, Imerys America, which filed for bankruptcy protection in February.
In the New Jersey case, the jury unanimously found that J&J’s talc didn’t contain asbestos and wasn’t responsible for plaintiff Ricardo Rimondi developing mesothelioma. Rimondi was disappointed with the jury’s decision, “particularly in light of the overwhelming scientific and documentary evidence supporting” allegations that J&J’s talc products are tainted with asbestos, Monica Cooper, one of his attorneys, said in an emailed message.
The Oklahoma case is Pipes v. Johnson & Johnson, CJ-2017-3487, District Court, Oklahoma Co., Oklahoma (Oklahoma City). The California case is Koretoff v. Arkema Inc., No. BC656506, Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles (Santa Monica) The New Jersey case is Rimondi v. BASF Catalysts, L-002912-17, Superior Court, Middlesex Co., New Jersey.