J&J Is Hit With $300 Million Jury Award in Talc Case -- WSJ
01 Juin 2019 - 09:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Peter Loftus
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (June 1, 2019).
A New York state court jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay
$300 million in punitive damages to a woman who claimed her use of
the health-products company's talc powder caused an asbestos-linked
cancer.
The jury's award Friday was one of the largest to an individual
in a series of trials over a range of safety-related allegations
about its talc products, including Johnson's Baby Powder. Last
week, the jury awarded the woman, Donna Olson, $20 million for pain
and suffering and $5 million to her husband, bringing the total
damages in the case to $325 million.
The award was also among the biggest in a subset of the J&J
talc lawsuits that center on mesothelioma, a rare cancer that
health researchers have linked to inhalation of asbestos. Ms. Olson
alleged Johnson's Baby Powder contained asbestos that caused her
mesothelioma.
A J&J spokesman said the New York trial had legal errors
that the company believes will warrant a reversal on appeal, which
it plans to pursue. "Decades of tests by independent experts and
academic institutions repeatedly confirm that Johnson's Baby Powder
does not contain asbestos or cause cancer," the spokesman said.
Jerome Block, an attorney for the Olsons, said in a statement
that "another jury has rejected J&J's misleading claims that
its talc was free of asbestos." He said the punitive damages
awarded to the Olsons reflect J&J's "wanton and reckless"
misconduct.
Johnson's Baby Powder is among New Brunswick, N.J.,-based
J&J's most recognizable products and one of the few branded
with the company's name, though the powder accounts for a tiny
fraction of its $81.6 billion in overall sales.
Concerns about J&J's potential liability have weighed on its
shares. The company's stock price has fallen more than 10% since
December, when Reuters reported that J&J knew for decades that
some of its talc powder contained asbestos, but the company
concealed it from regulators and the public.
J&J has said the Reuters report ignores thousands of tests
showing that its talc products don't contain asbestos. The company
also said the article ignores that it has cooperated fully with the
Food and Drug Administration and other authorities, and that
J&J has always used the most advanced methods to confirm its
cosmetic talc is safe and doesn't contain asbestos.
J&J faces about 14,200 talc-related claims, the company said
in a regulatory filing this month.
Many of the talc-powder claims against J&J have alleged that
it caused ovarian cancer in women who regularly used the product
for feminine hygiene.
In July 2018, a jury in St. Louis found J&J should pay $4.69
billion in damages to 22 women and their families who blamed
ovarian-cancer cases on asbestos in talc powder, the biggest single
verdict in such cases so far. That jury found J&J failed to
warn that its talc powder raised the risk of ovarian cancer.
J&J's appeal of the verdict is pending.
J&J has won several talc trials -- including one last week
in South Carolina -- and has succeeded in overturning some of the
verdicts against it on appeal.
In February, J&J said it received subpoenas from the U.S.
Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission
seeking documents related to the safety of its talc products.
--Sara Randazzo contributed to this article.
Write to Peter Loftus at peter.loftus@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 01, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
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