Settlement resolves thousands of US lawsuits, with a record UK case against the company under way.<\/p>\n
Published On 28 Jul 202628 Jul 2026<\/p>\n
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has agreed to pay $5.5bn to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits in the United States that allege its discontinued talc-based baby powder caused ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n
The pharmaceutical giant made the announcement on Monday, saying it covers about 69,000 cases in US federal and state courts, accounting for 99.75 percent of outstanding talc-related cases in the country.<\/p>\n
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The settlement will only be final once it is accepted by 95 percent of the claimants in state or federal courts.<\/p>\n
Talc is a soft mineral and was once a staple ingredient in cosmetics and baby products, but its use has declined as concerns rose over its links to cancer.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the World Health Organization classified talc as \u201cprobably carcinogenic to humans\u201d.<\/p>\n
J&J maintains that there is no evidence that talc causes cancer, but it stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020 and worldwide in 2023.<\/p>\n
In 2016, a US jury ordered J&J to pay $72m to the family of a woman who died of ovarian cancer, the first such case related to the use of the mineral in the country.<\/p>\n
Though the case was overturned a year later, claims against the company have multiplied since, with juries across the US awarding the plaintiffs.<\/p>\n
Erik Haas, J&J\u2019s litigation head, said the agreement lets J&J \u201cput this matter behind it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lawyers representing the plaintiffs welcomed the settlement as a good resolution to a decade-long court battle.<\/p>\n
The deal does not cover the United Kingdom, where the largest product liability case in UK history \u2013 covering more than 7,000 potential claimants \u2013 is being adjudicated.<\/p>\n
Filed in October 2025, the UK case alleges that J&J knew that its talc could cause cancers, chiefly ovarian and mesothelioma, but continued to sell the product, a claim the company also denies.<\/p>\n
The case has since gone before the UK High Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Settlement resolves thousands of US lawsuits, with a record UK case against the company under way. Published On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,13444,3456,84,44,127,772,1690,16119],"class_list":["post-830813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-courts","tag-europe","tag-health","tag-news","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-world-health-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}