By Diana Novak Jones<\/p>\n
Feb 13 (Reuters) \u2013 A jury in Pennsylvania state court on Friday awarded $250,000 to the family of a woman who sued Johnson & Johnson alleging\u00a0its talc-based baby powder was to blame for her ovarian cancer.<\/p>\n
The jury in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas sided with family members of Gayle Emerson, who claimed \u200bthat Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.<\/p>\n
Jurors awarded \u200cEmerson\u2019s family $50,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Erik Haas, J&J\u2019s worldwide vice president of litigation, said the company plans to appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis token verdict reflects the jury\u2019s appreciation that the claims were meritless and divorced from the science,\u201d Haas said.<\/p>\n
Leigh O\u2019Dell of the Beasley Allen Law Firm, who represented Emerson\u2019s family, said in a statement that the jury \u201cfound J&J\u2019s product and corporate conduct directly responsible for the death of Ms. \u200cEmerson.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile \u200bthe jury\u2019s award is less than we hoped, and significantly less than the amount \u2060necessary to punish J&J for their \u2060outrageous conduct, we are moving forward,\u201d O\u2019Dell said.<\/p>\n
Emerson, a Pennsylvania resident, sued in 2019 and died six months later at the age of 68, according to court records. Her son and daughter took over as the plaintiffs\u00a0after she died of metastatic ovarian cancer, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Emerson used J&J\u2019s baby powder from 1969 until 2017, when she learned \u200bfrom a relative it was associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer, according to her lawsuit. She had been diagnosed with the cancer two years earlier, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n
J&J is facing lawsuits in federal and state courts from more \u2060than 67,000 plaintiffs who have alleged that its talc-based products contained asbestos \u2060and caused ovarian and other cancers, according to court filings.<\/p>\n
The company has said its products are \u200bsafe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, \u200bswitching to a cornstarch product.<\/p>\n
J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that \u200chas been rejected three times by federal courts, most recently in April of last year. The bankruptcies had put most ovarian cancer cases on hold.<\/p>\n
The first ovarian cancer case to go to trial after the end of the bankruptcy-related pause resulted in a California jury awarding $40 million to two women in December.<\/p>\n
There are several cases slated for trial in state courts in the coming \u2060months. There has yet to be a trial in federal court, where most of the claims have been consolidated, but that could change this year after a U.S. federal magistrate judge ruled in January that the plaintiffs in the federal litigation can \u2060present testimony from experts that links baby \u200cpowder use with ovarian cancer. J&J has said it will appeal the\u00a0ruling.<\/p>\n
Product liability lawsuits, such \u2060as the J&J cases, rely on experts to establish that the product is capable \u200bof causing \u200cthe alleged harm.<\/p>\n
Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, \u200bwith verdicts as \u2060high as $4.69 billion. The company has won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.<\/p>\n
The majority of lawsuits involve ovarian cancer claims. Cases alleging talc caused a rare and deadly cancer called mesothelioma make up a smaller portion of the claims J&J is facing. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, \u200bMatthew Lewis and David Gregorio)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Diana Novak Jones Feb 13 (Reuters) \u2013 A jury in Pennsylvania state court on Friday awarded $250,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-113959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}