A Los Angeles Superior Court jury on Friday awarded $40 million in compensatory damages to two California women, Monica Kent and Deborah Schultz, concluding that decades of using Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) talc-based baby powder was responsible for their ovarian cancer.
The jury awarded $18 million to Kent and $22 million to Schultz and her husband, after finding that J&J was negligent, knowing for years that its talc-based products were dangerous but failing to warn consumers.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Andy Birchfield argued in closing arguments, “Absolutely they knew, they knew and they were doing everything they could to hide it, to bury the truth about the dangers,” dating the company’s knowledge back to the 1960s. Kent, who was diagnosed in 2014, and Schultz, diagnosed in 2018, both testified that they used the product after bathing for 40 years, requiring major surgeries and dozens of rounds of chemotherapy for their treatments.
J&J Vows Immediate Appeal
Johnson & Johnson immediately vowed to appeal the verdict, with Erik Haas, the company’s worldwide vice president of litigation, stating, the company plans to “immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts.”
J&J’s defense attorney, Allison Brown, maintained that the plaintiffs’ claims are not supported by major U.S. health authorities. She argued that there is no scientific study showing how talc can migrate from the external body to the reproductive organs to cause cancer, telling the jury, “They don’t have the evidence in this case, and they hope you don’t mind.”
Legal Battle Heats Up After Bankruptcy Attempts
This verdict is particularly significant as it marks the first successful plaintiffs’ verdict in an ovarian cancer case since 2021. The trial comes immediately after J&J’s latest attempt to resolve the litigation—which now involves more than 67,000 plaintiffs—through a controversial bankruptcy maneuver was rejected for the third time by federal courts in April.
J&J, which continues to maintain that its talc products are safe, asbestos-free, and do not cause cancer, stopped selling its talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching instead to a cornstarch formula.
The company has experienced mixed results in talc trials, with some prior verdicts reaching as high as $4.69 billion (later reduced on appeal), while it has also won some cases outright. The recent verdict signals a renewed legal battle in state courts across the country following the collapse of the bankruptcy strategy.