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A Los Angeles jury this month ordered Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who died in 2021 from mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer linked to asbestos exposure.
The family of California resident Mae More, who died at age 88, sued the company, alleging its talc-based baby powder products contained the asbestos that caused her cancer.
The jury ordered J&J to pay $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages. It is the largest settlement yet awarded in a mesothelioma case against the company, handed down just days after a South Carolina jury rejected a similar claim.
Trey Branham, a lawyer for Moore’s family, told Reuters he is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths.”
Erik Haas, J&J’s vice president of litigation, said in a statement that the company plans to immediately appeal the verdict, which he called “egregious and unconstitutional.” U.S. Supreme Court rulings have generally capped punitive damages at nine times the amount of compensatory damages.
The company has not yet filed the appeal.
Company worried for decades that talc could be contaminated with asbestos
J&J maintains that its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and don’t cause cancer. However, the company stopped selling its talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, and ended global sales in 2023 after facing tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that asbestos in the talc had caused mesothelioma, ovarian and other cancers.
It replaced the talc version of its powder with a cornstarch-based formula.
Internal memos showed that company officials worried for decades that the talc could be contaminated with asbestos, and that J&J ramped up its marketing to African American women and other high-use groups.
Talc and asbestos are both naturally occurring minerals that co-exist underground and can mix together during the mining process for talc.
Asbestos is a known human carcinogen, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer. There is “no safe level” of asbestos exposure, according to the WHO.
In March, a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas rejected J&J’s request to approve a proposed $9 billion settlement with the tens of thousands of people suing the company over talc-related cancers.
Company exploited bankruptcy laws to offload legal liability
Critics say J&J tried to exploit bankruptcy protections through a 2021 restructuring maneuver known as the Texas Two-Step, which allows companies to split into two entities and transfer legal liabilities to one of them.
The company created a subsidiary, LTL Management, and moved all baby powder claims into it. Two days later, LTL declared bankruptcy.
At the time, J&J said it was trying to resolve the claims in a way that was “equitable to all parties,” and that it would pay for any amounts the bankruptcy court determined LTL owned. In 2023, a federal judge rejected the bankruptcy claim.
The company then announced a deal to pay $8.9 billion over 25 years to the tens of thousands of claimants. However, two appeals courts rejected the settlement and the Texas federal court also rejected the settlement earlier this year.
Insurance Journal reported this week that J&J saw a 17% jump in new lawsuits claiming the baby powder causes cancer after the latest bankruptcy was thrown out. The company must now litigate the claims in court.
It currently faces 73,570 suits from consumers who say their cancer is linked to the baby powder — up from about 62,830 suits in December 2024. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Holly Froum predicts the number could eventually exceed 93,000 cases, and the company could be forced to pay as much as $11 billion to resolve current and future suits.
It has already spent more than $3 billion settling talc baby powder-related suits.
The mesothelioma cases were not part of the last bankruptcy proposal, and the company has been litigating those in state courts in recent months.
J&J hit with string of losses in state courts
Other recent successful talc lawsuits against J&J include a 2016 Missouri verdict awarding $72 million to the family of a woman who died from talc-related ovarian cancer and a 2024 order requiring the company to pay $700 million to settle claims by 42 states and Washington, D.C., that it deliberately misled consumers about the purity of its talc-based products.
Other successful jury verdicts include $3 million in New Orleans, $42.6 million in Boston, $16 million in Washington state and $34.2 million in Oregon.
The company has succeeded in reducing some awards on appeal. In Oregon last year, a state judge overturned a $260 million award to a woman who alleged the baby powder caused her to develop mesothelioma and granted the company a new trial.
J&J spun off its consumer products division — including its baby products, Tylenol and Aveeno — in 2023 into a separate company, Kenvue, becoming a minority shareholder when the company went public.
Yesterday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he is suing the makers of Tylenol, claiming they deceptively marketed the drug as safe for pregnant women despite known links to autism and other disorders.
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J&J accused of long history of corruption
J&J has a long record of promoting unsafe products to vulnerable populations. In 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that J&J is “facing lawsuits from more than 100,000 plaintiffs over its product safety and marketing tactics.”
The company has paid billions of dollars over the decades for civil settlements and criminal activities.
A congressional investigation later revealed that in 2008, the company hired contractors to secretly buy up Motrin IB caplets so it could avoid having to do a recall when it was discovered they didn’t dissolve properly.
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) charged J&J with conspiracy for paying off Greek doctors to advance its product sales. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed civil complaints.
J&J paid a $70 million penalty for bribing officials in Greece, Poland and Romania. An executive for one of its subsidiaries was sentenced in 2010 to a year in prison for unlawful payments to physicians within the Greek national healthcare system.
In 2013, the company paid nearly $2.5 billion to compensate 8,000 consumers for its flawed hip implants and in 2016 it had to pay another $1 billion to plaintiffs injured by the same product.
Also in 2013, the DOJ charged the company $2.2 billion in criminal fines for marketing its autism and anti-psychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses.
J&J has also paid billions in lawsuits related to its blood-thinner Xarelto, diabetes drug Invokana, transvaginal mesh products, and Risperdal.
It was also among several pharmaceutical companies sued by states and municipalities for contributing to the opioid epidemic.
J&J also partnered with EcoHealth Alliance, a funder of the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the center of the controversy over the origins of COVID-19.
Before developing its COVID-19 vaccine, which was later linked to life-threatening blood clots, the company was not a major vaccine manufacturer.
By May 2023, its vaccine was no longer available in the U.S.
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