J&J SEEKS TO COMBINE TALC POWDER SUITS
Firm facing more than 14,000 claims its products caused cancer
JOHNSON & Johnson (J&J) wants a federal judge to take over more than 2,000 baby-powder suits it faces instead of allowing the cases to be heard by state-court juries, where the company has a mixed record.
The world’s largest maker of healthcare products seeks to invoke legal protections available to J&J’s bankrupt talc supplier Imerys Talc America Inc to collect suits accusing its baby powder of causing asbestos-related cancers before a single judge in Delaware.
Imerys sought Chapter 11 protection in bankruptcy court there
in February after being swamped by talc suits.
Because it hasn’t filed for bankruptcy protection, J&J would normally not be entitled to demand state-court litigation be halted or transferred to a federal court.
But a special bankruptcy law provision allows Imerys creditors with significant financial ties to the talc miner to make the request to promote “expeditious resolution of claims,” according to Thursday’s filing.
“Because the claims raise common questions of fact, law, and science, the current nationwide” round of pre-trial information exchanges “is duplicative, unpredictable, and wasteful,” said J&J in court papers.
J&J is facing more than 14,000 claims its talc products caused ovarian cancer or mesothelioma, a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. The company denies its products ever contained the carcinogen and argues talc on its own doesn’t cause the life-threatening illnesses.
More than 11,000 of those suits filed in federal courts around the United States already have been consolidated before a federal judge in New Jersey for pre-trial information exchanges. J&J’s request aims to set up a similar — but smaller — concentration of the state court cases, here.
J&J faces more than a dozen trials, mainly in California, over the next five months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The company has a mixed record when juries have weighed the talc cancer cases. J&J prevailed in a New Jersey trial last month, two weeks after a jury in Oakland, California, hit it with US$29 million (RM120.14 million) in damages.
J&J’s lawyers noted in their filing they aren’t seeking to bring cases, here, that have already gone to trial or are in the juryselection process.
That would include a nearly US$4.7 billion verdict against J&J last year in state court in Missouri on behalf of 22 women who blamed their cancers on baby powder use and a US$117 million verdict on behalf of a male user of the talcum powder in state court in New Jersey.