Pennsylvania jury finds Johnson & Johnson liable for cancer in latest talc trial

By Diana Novak Jones

Feb 13 (Reuters) - A jury in Pennsylvania state court on Friday awarded $250,000 to the family of a woman who sued Johnson & Johnson alleging its talc-based baby powder was to blame for her ovarian cancer, according to an attorney for plaintiffs in nationwide talc litigation against the company.

The jury in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas sided with family members of Gayle Emerson, who claimed that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but

failed to warn consumers, according to attorney Chris Tisi.

Jurors awarded Emerson's family $50,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages, said Tisi, who represents plaintiffs in separate federal court talc cases against Johnson & Johnson.

Representatives for J&J and lawyers for Emerson's family did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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 after she died of metastatic ovarian cancer, according to the lawsuit.

Emerson used J&J’s baby powder from 1969 until 2017, when she learned from 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.

J&J is facing lawsuits in federal and state courts from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who have alleged that its talc-based products contained asbestos and caused ovarian and other cancers, according to court filings.

The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.

J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts, most recently in April of last year. The bankruptcies had put most ovarian cancer cases on hold. 

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.

There are several cases slated for trial in state courts in the coming months. 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 present testimony from experts that links baby powder use with ovarian cancer. J&J has said it will appeal the ruling.

Product liability lawsuits, such as the J&J cases, rely on experts to establish that the product is capable of causing the alleged harm.

Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with verdicts as high as $4.69 billion. The company has won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.

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.

(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)