Big Plaintiff Win in J&J Baby Powder Case Overturned by Oregon Judge
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An Oregon judge wiped out a major plaintiff win by overturning a $260 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson in the latest talcum powder lawsuit update.
Kyung Lee, a 49-year-old woman who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2023, had blamed her cancer on the J&J baby powder she’d used for decades. For years, the company’s talcum powder has been tied to mesothelioma, a rare cancer that affects the lining of internal organs.
In 2019, for example, J&J recalled 33,000 bottles after asbestos was discovered in a test sample.
An Oregon jury sided with Lee and awarded the multimillion verdict in June. But, according to Reuters, Judge Katharine von ter Stegge sided with J&J’s motion to throw out that verdict and order a new trial. Lee plans to appeal the ruling.
The judge’s decision is surprising, partly due to the regular success that mesothelioma cases against J&J have had in recent months.
In August, a South Carolina jury handed out a $63.4 million verdict to a man who developed mesothelioma after using J&J baby powder in place of deodorant for decades. That came just a few months after an Illinois jury awarded $45 million to the family of a woman who died from the rare cancer.
Litigation against J&J over claims that its talc powder caused mesothelioma and ovarian cancer are ongoing, with tens of thousands of lawsuits still active.
J&J permanently discontinued its talc-based baby powder in the United States in 2020.
Much of J&J’s Baby Powder Litigation Could Soon Be Resolved
As lawsuits continue, J&J is moving closer to completing a settlement that would resolve much of the litigation surrounding the company’s baby powder and its possible health effects.
The settlement, which has ballooned to over $9 billion total after J&J added $1 billion to the initial amount earlier this month, would apply to lawsuits that claim J&J baby powder led to the development of ovarian cancer.
J&J is believed to have the approval of over 75% of plaintiffs, the required threshold for the settlement to move forward. The next step will be for J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management, LLC – which was created in 2021 to assume the company’s talcum powder liabilities – to file for Chapter 11 in a Texas two-step bankruptcy strategy.
But this plan has no guarantee of success. J&J has tried this bankruptcy strategy before with past settlement offers and has yet to see positive results.
There are currently about 58,000 talcum powder lawsuits against J&J pending in multidistrict litigation.
Editor Lindsay Donaldson contributed to this article.