Johnson and Johnson \u200csaid on Monday it would pay an estimated $5.5 billion (\u20ac4.8 billion) to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its baby powder and other talc products cause ovarian cancer, in a landmark deal that \u200bcould end a contentious legal battle that has dogged the company for a decade. <\/p>\n
Johnson and Johnson said the settlement covers about 76,000 claims, including ones consolidated in federal court in New Jersey, and related cases in state court, representing nearly all of the remaining talc claims against the company. Johnson and Johnson previously settled most of the cases alleging that its talc contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma.<\/p>\n
Plaintiffs\u2019 law firms confirmed the \u200bdeal on Monday, saying it was a good resolution after a decade-long court battle. The deal must be accepted by 95 per cent of the ovarian cancer claimants in state or federal court before it \u2060becomes final.<\/p>\n
Johnson and Johnson\u2019s vice-president of litigation, Erik Haas, said the claims were \u201cmeritless\u201d and the company was willing to settle in order to \u200cget \u200cclosure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile \u200bwe are confident the company would have ultimately prevailed with further litigation, as it has in the vast majority of cases tried to date, this resolution allows the company to put this matter behind it and remain focused on \u2060its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives,\u201d Haas said. <\/p>\n
Johnson and Johnson \u200bexpects to pay $3 billion in 2027, and it will make further payments in \u200b2028. But the deal could be worth more, depending on how many people participate in the settlement. <\/p>\n
Chris Seeger, an attorney who represents about 2,500 clients with talc \u200cclaims and helped negotiate the agreement, said Johnson and Johnson could ultimately \u200bpay $7 billion or more. The settlement assigns specific values to qualifying ovarian cancer claims but does not cap J&J\u2019s total payout, he said. \u201cWe got \u2060a fair settlement, and our clients are going to be happy \u2060with it,\u201d Seeger said in an \u200binterview.<\/p>\n
Johnson and Johnson reached the settlement after a series of wins in court, including victories in individual trials, successful efforts to disqualify plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers from the litigation, and court rulings against experts that plaintiffs had used to prove their cases in court. The company won a significant court victory in the long-running legal battle last week, when a federal judge cast doubt on individual plaintiffs\u2019 ability to prove that talc specifically caused their ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n
The company has long denied that its talc products caused cancer, saying talc was safe and did not contain asbestos. The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. The litigation resumed in March 2025, after being put \u200con hold for more than three years \u2060while Johnson and Johnson unsuccessfully pursued a strategy known as the \u201cTexas two step\u201d, filing three bankruptcies through a shell-company subsidiary in an effort to settle the cases. Each bankruptcy ended in dismissal. Before the bankruptcy attempts, Johnson and Johnson had a mixed record in talc trials, with a multibillion verdict \u200cin favour of 22 women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.<\/p>\n
Unlike the proposed bankruptcy settlements, Monday\u2019s agreement applies \u200bonly to existing claims and does not address future lawsuits. The exclusion of future claims made more money \u200bavailable to current plaintiffs than the bankruptcy proposal did, and it also accelerates the payments so that all claims will be paid within 18 months instead of being spread out over more than a decade, Seeger said. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnson and Johnson \u200csaid on Monday it would pay an estimated $5.5 billion (\u20ac4.8 billion) to resolve tens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,258,61,60,23340],"class_list":["post-571789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-cancer","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-johnson-and-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}