A jury decided on Tuesday that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) must pay $18.8 million to a California man who claimed he developed cancer after using its baby powder.
(J&J) pays to cancer person
A setback for the company as it seeks to settle thousands of similar cases involving its talc-based products in U.S. bankruptcy court.
The jury sided with Emory Hernandez Valadez, who filed a lawsuit against J&J in California state court in Oakland last year, seeking monetary damages. Hernandez, 24, claims he developed mesothelioma, a deadly cancer, in the tissue around his heart as a result of his childhood exposure to the company’s talc.
The six-week trial was the first over talc that J&J, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, had faced in nearly two years.
The jury determined that Hernandez was entitled to compensation for his medical bills and pain and suffering from cancer, but it declined to award punitive damages against the company.
Hernandez will be unable to collect the judgment in the near future due to a bankruptcy court order freezing most talc litigation.
J&J vice president of litigation Erik Haas said in a statement that the company would appeal the verdict, calling it “irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”
J&J’s lawyers said in closing arguments to the jury on July 10 that there was no evidence linking Hernandez’s type of mesolthelioma to asbestos or proving that Hernandez was ever exposed to tainted talc.
During closing arguments, Hernandez’s lawyers accused J&J of a “despicable” decades-long coverup of asbestos contamination.
Hernandez testified in June, telling jurors that if he had been warned that J&J’s talc contained asbestos, he would have avoided it, as his lawsuit claims.
Jurors heard from Hernandez’s mother, Anna Camacho, who testified that she used a lot of J&J’s baby powder on her son as a baby and throughout his childhood. She sobbed as she described Hernandez’s condition.
Tens of thousands of people have filed lawsuits, alleging that J&J’s baby powder and other talc products contained asbestos at times and caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. J&J claims its talc products are safe and contain no asbestos, which has been linked to mesothelioma.
LTL Management, a J&J subsidiary, filed for bankruptcy in Trenton, New Jersey, in April, proposing to pay $8.9 billion to settle more than 38,000 lawsuits and prevent new ones from being filed.
It was the company’s second attempt to settle talc claims in bankruptcy, following the rejection of an earlier bid by a federal appeals court.
Most litigation is halted during bankruptcy proceedings, but Hernandez’s trial was allowed to proceed because he is expected to live only a short time.
Hernandez’s type of mesothelioma is extremely rare, distinguishing his case from the vast majority of those pending against J&J.
LTL’s latest bankruptcy filing is being challenged by asbestos plaintiffs. They claim the filing was made in bad faith in order to shield the company from litigation.
J&J and LTL have argued that bankruptcy provides settlement payouts to plaintiffs in a more fair, efficient, and equitable manner than trial courts, which they have compared to a “lottery” in which some litigants receive large awards while others receive nothing.
According to bankruptcy court filings, J&J has spent approximately $4.5 billion on talc-related verdicts, settlements, and legal fees.
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