J&J Loses Latest Cancer Claim Lawsuit
US healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has said it will appeal the verdict of a jury in St. Louis, Missouri, ordering the company to pay more than $110 million in damages to a 62-year-old woman who blamed its talc-based baby powder and other of its talc products for her ovarian cancer.
Imerys Talc Americas, which provided the talc to J&J, a subsidiary of France-based Imerys, was ordered to pay $100,000.
The plaintiff said she developed the cancer after four decades of using the J&J products.
J&J last year lost three related lawsuits, carrying penalties of about $200, while winning one suit earlier this year. At least one other case has been dismissed by the courts, and an estimated 3,000 are still pending. The company told US media said it will “continue to defend the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder."
While attorneys for the plaintiffs have charged that J&J has consistently ignored “compelling scientific evidence” showing that the powder, used in intimate applications, could travel to the ovaries and cause cancer, the manufacturer has repeatedly pointed to a lack of “credible scientific evidence”
In the current case, news agencies quote a company lawyer as saying the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA, does not believe a warning label should be applied to the baby powder because “the science doesn’t warrant it,” while the Missouri jury disagreed.
According to reports, last week’s $110 million verdict was the eighth largest jury award in the US so far in 2017.
