Johnson & Johnson Talc Product Lawsuits Expand into California
The company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been facing lawsuits over talc-based products that some users claim to lead to cancer, and a lawsuit in California has opened this issue even wider.
Information on Previous Lawsuits
A California resident recently won $417 million in a lawsuit against J&J relating to a product that contained talc and possibly lead to their cancer diagnosis. This was just one of around 48,000 lawsuits that the company is going up against with regards to their products.
All other amounts rewarded to people in lawsuits came to a total of $307, and were rewarded from the same court in St. Louis, Missouri. Many out-of-state cases came to the court after the initial large sums of money were rewarded to various parties.
J&J believes that the court is very “friendly” to plaintiffs seeking money, and they feel that people having been “shopping” for a court that would be likely to give them what they want. The company did, however, seem to directly benefit from a new law that courts could only deal with cases involving injuries that occurred in their own state, which was passed by the Supreme Court in June.
About the California Lawsuit
The lawsuit in California involved a 63-year-old woman that claimed that J&J baby powder, which contains talc, was the cause of her ovarian cancer. There have been several other cases involving women who have filed lawsuits for the same reason
Some of the plaintiffs’ experts used in the cases in St. Louis were also used during the California case.
A product liability defense lawyer, stated that the evidence provided for the jury was “compelling” and made the case harder for the defense.
