Court Cuts J&J Damages Payout to $120 Million
A New York state Supreme Court hearing Johnson & Johnson’s appeal of a 2019 baby powder judgment has agreed to reduce a $325 million jury award by two-thirds to $120 million. It declined to throw out the entire claim case, however, saying there was evidence to suggest the company’s talc-based powder caused the plaintiff’s mesothelioma as charged.
J&J has announced it will appeal the entire verdict to the US Supreme Court, as it has done in at least one other case it has lost to date and has vowed to do in others.
Donna Olson, who testified that she used J&J’s baby powder or its Shower to Shower product daily for more than 50 years, sued the New Jersey-based healthcare giant in 2017. During the proceedings, the jury found that executives “willfully or recklessly committed egregious and extraordinary wrongdoing” in their handling of the talc-based products.
Lawyers for the plaintiff showed jurors internal documents from the 1960s and 1970s, which they said indicated J&J knew the talc used to make baby powder contained asbestos. However, the company not only failed to warn the public but also changed test methods so asbestos could not be detected, they argued.
J&J, which has subsequently stopped selling the talc-based baby powder in North America, currently faces 21,800 claims that its powders caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Up to now, it has consistently denied that the illnesses were caused by its product or that its talc was tainted by asbestos.
Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist
