£22m payout for woman who says talc led to cancer
A WOMAN with terminal lung cancer has been awarded £22million over fears talcum powder caused her illness.
A US jury awarded the damages over a claim that baby powder made by Johnson & Johnson contained asbestos – a wellknown cause of cancer.
Mother-of-two Terry Leavitt, who used Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products for 30 years, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2017, aged 52.
The court heard mesothelioma – a rare form of lung cancer – is a disease that will eventually kill her.
Mrs Leavitt’s lawyer, Joseph Satterley, told the jury: ‘It’s a slow, painful death.’ He claimed Johnson & Johnson knew of the danger for many years and said officials had intentionally concealed the facts.
The company denies both allegations. Mr Satterley added: ‘Allowing it on babies is despicable conduct. They [J&J] knew about the asbestos risk even before Terry Leavitt was born. They had a zero tolerance [for asbestos] – that’s what they claimed. There is no safe level.’
Johnson’s Baby Powder is available in the UK, retailing at around £1.50 for 100g – but the company’s Shower to Shower product has been discontinued.
Johnson & Johnson insists there is no asbestos in its products, and denies any link to cancer.
The verdict, delivered in California, marks the latest defeat for the firm, which is facing more than 13,000 lawsuits over talcum products.
But Johnson & Johnson said it would appeal, citing ‘serious procedural and evidentiary errors’ in the course of the trial. The jurors found that the talc-based products used by Mrs Leavitt were defective and that the company had failed to warn consumers of the health risks, awarding $29.4million (£22million) in damages.
Moshe Maimon, a lawyer for Mrs Leavitt, said in a statement: ‘Yet another jury has rejected J&J’s misleading claims that its talc was free of asbestos. The internal J&J documents that the jury saw, once more laid bare the shocking truth of decades of cover-up, deception and concealment by J&J.’
Johnson & Johnson said it would appeal as Mrs Leavitt’s lawyers had fundamentally failed to show that their baby powder product contains asbestos. It said in a statement: ‘We respect the legal process and reiterate that jury verdicts are not medical, scientific or regulatory conclusions about a product.’
It comes after a group of 22 women with ovarian cancer were last year awarded £3.6billion in damages over fears that talcum powder caused their illness.
Their lawyers claimed asbestos is mixed in with the mineral talc, which is crushed to a fine powder to make the primary ingredient in talcum powder. Some 40 per cent of British women are thought to regularly use talcum powder.
No similar lawsuits have begun in the UK against Johnson & Johnson – which experts say is because courts here require a higher standard of proof – but British lawyers are closely watching the cases.
Many doctors say the link between talcum powder and cancer is unproven. However, in 2006 the evidence was strong enough for the International Agency for Research on Cancer – an agency of the World Health Organisation – to classify intimate use of the product as ‘possibly carcinogenic’.
‘They knew about asbestos risk’