It happened again. A Los Angeles jury sentenced Johnson & Johnson to a total of $966 million in damages after the death of Mae Moore, a California woman who died in 2021 from mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer linked to exposure to asbestos.
According to the plaintiffs, the disease was caused by prolonged use of the company’s talc-based products, which contained asbestos fibers.
The jury awarded $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, one of the highest ever awarded in a single talc-related case.
Thousands of lawsuits underway
Mae Moore’s case is part of a much larger litigation: Johnson & Johnson faces more than 67,000 lawsuits in the United States. Most of these involve women who claim to have developed ovarian cancer after prolonged use of the well-known brand’s talc-based products.
The charges related to mesothelioma, as in the Moore case, are numerically lower but equally relevant because they are linked to contamination by asbestos, a substance classified as highly carcinogenic.
The precedents
The Los Angeles verdict is certainly not the first conviction suffered by Johnson & Johnson. In 2018, a Missouri jury ordered the company to pay $4.7 billion in damages to 22 women with ovarian cancer, one of the largest settlements ever imposed in cases involving talc use.
That same year, a Reuters investigation revealed internal documents suggesting the company had known for decades about possible asbestos contamination in some of its talc batches. The problem was that he didn’t communicate this to either regulators or consumers.
Since then, Johnson & Johnson has faced tens of thousands of lawsuits and has sought to resolve them through a controversial “technical” bankruptcy plan for its subsidiary, which has been rejected several times by federal courts. However, some millionaire verdicts were reduced or overturned on appeal, while others were upheld, keeping the pressure on the company high.
Johnson & Johnson’s reply
The company immediately announced its intention to appeal. Erik Haas, J&J’s global vice president of litigation, called the verdict “atrocious and unconstitutional,” accusing the plaintiffs’ lawyers of using “junk science” in the courtroom.
The company has reiterated for years that its products are safe, free of asbestos and non-carcinogenic. However, after decades of controversy and lawsuits, J&J stopped selling talcum powder in the United States and Canada in 2020, then pulled it from global markets in 2023, replacing it with cornstarch-based versions.
This long trail of trials represents a real threat to Johnson & Johnson’s image and finances. Even if the company remains a giant in the sector, the Moore case – and the thousands of proceedings still pending – demonstrate how the responsibility for having placed dangerous products on the market can continue to generate legal and reputational consequences even decades later.
