As US healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson defends more than 14,000 lawsuits from plaintiffs claiming its iconic talc-based baby powder caused their cancer, it won a case in South Carolina last week and lost another in New York.

On May 23, a South Carolina state court jury, after two days of deliberation, decided unanimously that asbestos, allegedly present in the company’s cosmetic talc products, did not cause a woman’s peritoneal mesothelioma.

The jurors accepted J&J’s explanation that the form of mesothelioma suffered by the plaintiff, Beth-Anee Johnson, who had used the powder since the 1960s, occurs naturally.

Pointing to medical tests showing that no asbestos was present in the plaintiff’s lungs, the company argued that, this would not be the case if the hazardous chemical had made it to her peritoneum, which lines the abdominal cavity.

The South Carolina verdict came two days after a New York jury awarded $25 million in compensatory damages in a similar mesothelioma trial. This case involved a 66-year-old woman who blamed Johnson & Johnson’s products for her pleural mesothelioma, which affects the lungs.

Donna Olson said she had used both the company’s baby powder and its Shower to Shower branded product from the time she was eight years until the end of 2015. She was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, which affects the organ that lines the lungs.

The New York jury this week was expected to assign additional award for punitive damages. Olson contends that J&J is directly responsible for causing her cancer and liable for numerous acts of misconduct, including negligence, breach of warranty, civil conspiracy and fraud (for not labelling its products as potentially carcinogenic).

Referring to the South Carolina case, J&J said it was the fifth verdict in its favor “in recent months,” and suggested that prior verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs had “suffered significant evidentiary errors which we believe will warrant reversal on appeal.”

Remarking on the difference between the last two cases, the company said the New York jury did not hear “critical information regarding false testimony by the plaintiff’s central testing expert,” while the South Carolina jury did, and consequently concluded that its baby powder does not contain asbestos and was not the cause of the plaintiff’s disease.

Meanwhile, plaintiffs and their counsel in talc-related cases against Johnson & Johnson are resisting plans to remove all of the pending trials from state courts to a federal court following talc supplier Imerys America’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing earlier this year.

In April, J&J remanded 2,400 cases to federal courts across the country, citing the Chapter 11 proceedings.  All civil cases involving its exclusive supplier should be handled by the US District Court for the District of Delaware, which is handling the bankruptcy filing, the company has argued.

Lawyers whose cases are affected insist that the moves were improper, and that the federal courts lack jurisdiction.