Francesca Biagioli There's no peace for Johnson & Johnson and its asbestos-contaminated talc. A Los Angeles court has ordered the company to pay total damages of over $950 million following the cancer death of a woman
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It happened again. A Los Angeles jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a total of $966 million in damages following the death of Mae Moore, a California woman who died in 2021 from mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer linked to asbestos exposure.
According to the plaintiffs, the disease was caused by prolonged use of the company’s talc-based products, which contained asbestos fibers.
The jury awarded $16 million in compensatory damages and a staggering $950 million in punitive damages, one of the highest amounts ever awarded in a single talc-related case.
Thousands of lawsuits pending
Mae Moore’s case is part of a much broader legal battle: Johnson & Johnson currently faces more than 67,000 lawsuits in the United States. Most of these involve women who claim to have developed ovarian cancer after prolonged use of the brand’s talc-based products.
Claims related to mesothelioma, like the Moore case, are fewer in number but equally significant because they’re linked to asbestos contamination, a substance classified as highly carcinogenic.
Previous verdicts
The Los Angeles verdict is certainly not Johnson & Johnson’s first conviction. In 2018, a Missouri jury ordered the company to pay $4.7 billion to 22 women suffering from ovarian cancer, one of the largest damages ever imposed in talc-related cases.
That same year, a Reuters investigation revealed internal documents suggesting the company had known for decades about possible asbestos contamination in some of its talc batches. The problem was that it hadn’t disclosed this information to either regulators or consumers.
Since then, Johnson & Johnson has faced tens of thousands of lawsuits and attempted to resolve them through a controversial “technical” bankruptcy plan for its subsidiary, which was rejected multiple times by federal courts. Some multimillion-dollar verdicts have been reduced or overturned on appeal, while others have been upheld, maintaining high pressure on the company.
Johnson & Johnson’s response
The company immediately announced its intention to appeal. Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, called the verdict “outrageous and unconstitutional,” accusing plaintiffs’ attorneys of using “junk science” in court.
The company has maintained for years that its products are safe, asbestos-free, and non-carcinogenic. However, after decades of controversy and lawsuits, J&J stopped selling talc in the United States and Canada in 2020, then withdrew it from global markets in 2023, replacing it with cornstarch-based versions.
This long trail of lawsuits represents a concrete threat to Johnson & Johnson’s image and finances. Even though the company remains a giant in the industry, the Moore case—and the thousands of proceedings still pending—demonstrate how the consequences of marketing dangerous products can continue to generate legal and reputational fallout even decades later.
Source: Reuters
