A jury in Missouri, USA, has ordered Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to pay nearly $4.7 billion in damages to 22 women who claimed its talc product had caused them to develop ovarian cancer.

The jury initially awarded compensation of $550 million and then added $4.1 billion in punitive damages. Reuters news agency said the figure was the largest so far in the talc litigation.

J&J expressed its deep disappointment in the verdict, saying it was “the product of a fundamentally unfair process that allowed plaintiffs to present a group of 22 women, most of whom had no connection to Missouri, in a single case all alleging that they developed ovarian cancer”. Six of the 22 women represented in the case have died from the cancer.

The company said it would appeal, stating that the “multiple errors present in this latest trial were worse than those in previous trials, which have been reversed”.

Earlier this month, the US healthcare giant won its third appeal in Missouri, where the Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s 2016 judgement. The company has also won two other appeals during the past year: one worth $72 million in Missouri and another $417 million case in California. J&J is currently facing more than 9,000 cases involving the baby powder.