Johnson & Johnson was told by a California jury to pay $966 million to the family of a dead woman who blamed her cancer on life-long use of the company's baby powder in the largest verdict for a single user in the 15-year litigation.
The Los Angeles state court jury late Monday found J&J liable for Mae Moore's mesothelioma - a cancer tied to asbestos exposure - and awarded her $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages. Moore died in 2021 at age 88. The award will go to her family, who alleged J&J hid the health risks of its iconic powder.
"We will immediately appeal this egregious and unconstitutional verdict that is directly at odds - in result and amount - with the vast majority of other talc cases wherein the company has prevailed," Erik Haas, Worldwide Vice President of Litigation at J&J, said in a statement.
The verdict comes as J&J is gearing up for a wave of jury trials over its talc-based baby powder, which it withdrew from the worldwide market in 2023. The company unsuccessfully sought three times to use the bankruptcy courts to force a settlement of tens of thousands of cases.
"It took this family five years to get their day in court and we're pleased the jury concluded J&J should be held accountable," said Jessica Dean, a Texas-based lawyer who represented Moore's family.
While J&J has spent more than $3 billion settling lawsuits alleging asbestos in its baby powder harmed users, the company still faces more than 70,000 claims the product caused mesothelioma and ovarian cancers. Many of those cases have been consolidated before a federal judge in New Jersey for pre-trial information exchanges.
Nearly a dozen juries have held J&J and its Kenvue spinoff responsible for baby powder users' cancers and awarded billions of dollars in damages in total. Many of those awards later were reduced or thrown out on appeal.
J&J has steadfastly maintained talc doesn't cause cancer and that there's never been any asbestos in the product. The company also contends it has appropriately marketed its baby powder for more than 100 years.
Plaintiffs cited internal J&J documents that they claim show that the company knew about the presence of asbestos in its talc at least by the early 1970s.
The largest trial verdict against J&J was a $4.7 billion jury award in 2018 to 20 women in state court in Missouri. An appeals court cut the verdict to $2.1 billion. J&J wound up paying $2.5 billion with interest.
Moore's award also is likely to be reduced, according to Bloomberg Intelligence's Holly Froum. US Supreme Court guidelines say punitive damage awards shouldn't be more than 10 times higher than compensatory awards to avoid being excessive.
Dean said Moore used J&J's baby powder - along with its Shower-to-Shower powder - for about 80 years. Jurors found J&J intended to deceive the woman by not making the products' cancer risks clear, according to court filings. J&J sold Shower-to-Shower to Valeant Pharmaceuticals in 2012 for about $150 million.
The case is Moore v. J&J, JCCP 4674, 21STCV055134, California Superior Court (Los Angeles).
