Talcum Powder Lawsuits

Manufacturers, distributors and retailers of talcum powder have all been named in lawsuits in recent years. These include well known manufacturers such as Johnson & Johnson, and retailers such as Target, Walmart, CVS and Walgreens. Suppliers of talc have also been successfully sued.

In May 2021, a California Superior Court jury awarded a retired school bus driver and veteran a $4.8 million verdict against supplier Whittaker, Clark & Daniels. The jury determined that asbestos-contaminated talc from the supplier used in an Old Spice powder product led to the plaintiff’s diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer that forms in the lining of the lungs.

Talc-related lawsuits stem from the potential for asbestos to contaminate talc during the mining process. Both minerals form together in the earth and while talc itself is safe, asbestos exposure can cause illnesses including asbestosis, ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Talc has been used in makeup, baby powder, shaving products, toys, paint, ceramic glaze and joint compound, putting consumers, industrial workers and children at risk.

Johnson & Johnson, for example, currently faces more than 36,000 lawsuits. The brand already faces more than $4 billion in settlements, verdicts and defense costs. While the company is one of the most profitable in the U.S. with a reported market share of more than $450 billion, J&J created a subsidiary, LTL Management LLC, to split its assets from its liabilities and then LTL Management filed for bankruptcy.

The reorganization and bankruptcy move came after an unsuccessful attempt in June 2021 to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a $2.1 billion judgement in Missouri awarded to 22 women with ovarian cancer. In July 2021, with J&J’s bankruptcy plans making headlines, a U.S. House of Representatives oversight committee sent a letter to the company urging it to drop its bankruptcy tactic. Court documents from LTL Management’s bankruptcy petition lists the subsidiary’s worth at $10 billion and its liabilities at $10 billion.

Talc lawsuits against J&J are now temporarily halted while LTL Management awaits its federal bankruptcy court ruling.

In November 2021, Bloomberg reported on unsealed emails that showed J&J and its talc supplier picked scientists that wrote a 2009 report on talc and cancer. The companies even had authors edit the final draft. The FDA relied on data in the report to decide against adding cancer warnings to talc products. The emails were previously used as evidence in a state of Mississippi lawsuit against J&J.

In August 2022, J&J announced that it would discontinue its talc-based baby powder globally in 2023 because of poor sales. The company denies that the decision is related to cancer lawsuits or asbestos contamination.

Ovarian cancer cases make up the bulk of the talcum powder litigation. The talc lawsuits brought by women and their families allege that their cancer was directly caused by years of regular talcum powder use for feminine hygiene.

A total of 10,137 lawsuits were pending in multidistrict litigation in a New Jersey federal court in February 2019. Other talc lawsuits were also pending in state courts in California and Missouri.

Some talc lawsuits have generated giant verdicts. Other cases have been decided in favor of talc manufacturers or reversed on appeal. Still others have been dismissed or delayed.

In a prominent ovarian cancer talc trial in 2018,  nearly two-dozen women told a St. Louis jury how they’d sprinkle Johnson’s Baby Powder and other products such as Shower to Shower on their genitals and other body parts for years as part of their daily hygiene routine.

Decades later, each of the women was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Most endured painful surgeries, radiation treatments and chemotherapy. While some achieved remission, others suffered relapses. Several died before the case even went to trial.

Scientists, doctors and other witnesses testified that the women’s cancer diagnoses may not have been a coincidence. Instead, they theorized that the women developed cancer because the talc they had used had been tainted with asbestos.

Over the years, testing of Johnson’s Baby Powder had on occasion shown that the talc had been contaminated with the cancer-causing chemical asbestos, they explained. The same types of asbestos were later found in the tumors of some the plaintiffs.

While Johnson & Johnson denies allegations that its baby powder products are tainted with asbestos or cause cancer, jurors didn’t buy it. The trial ended with jurors awarding $4.7 billion to the 22 plaintiffs. It was a record verdict in talc lawsuits and the sixth largest product-defect verdict in history.

While Johnson & Johnson plans to appeal the decision, the company was unsuccessful in getting a Missouri judge to set aside the verdict.

In a December 2018 ruling, St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison said Johnson & Johnson’s conduct was “particularly reprehensible” because company officials “knew of the presence of asbestos in products that they knowingly targeted for sale to mothers and babies, knew of the damage their products caused, and misrepresented the safety of these products for decades.”

People with mesothelioma and their family members are also filing and winning cases against talc manufacturers. Like many of those with ovarian cancer, the mesothelioma patients claim asbestos-contaminated talc caused their cancer. Asbestos exposure is the leading cause of mesothelioma.

A Georgia woman was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2016. She died 15 months after her diagnosis at age 47. Her husband is suing Johnson & Johnson. He alleges the company knew its baby powder was contaminated with asbestos but didn’t warn consumers.

“Our belief is that she was exposed in the home as a child — long-term, repeated exposure to asbestos-tainted baby powder,” the woman’s husband told his local NBC news station, 11Alive in Atlanta. “My wife had her life taken away from her. She had no choice in the matter.”

In April 2018, Stephen Lanzo III, a then-46-year-old investment banker with mesothelioma, won a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson and its talc supplier, Imerys Talc America.

Lanzo claimed he developed the deadly disease after inhaling asbestos-contaminated talc particles from Shower to Shower and Johnson’s Baby Powder, which he’d used for more than three decades.

A pivotal moment in the case occurred when Lanzo’s lawyers introduced into evidence a confidential 1969 Johnson & Johnson memo that acknowledged testing had shown asbestos in the company’s baby powder. The memo said the firm should brace itself for potential lawsuits if the information were to become public, according to Bloomberg news.

At the end of the three-month trial, a New Jersey jury awarded Lanzo and his wife $117 million.

In December 2018, Johnson & Johnson reportedly settled a lawsuit brought by a New York woman who claimed Johnson’s Baby Powder caused her to develop mesothelioma. The $1.5 million settlement appears to be the first time the healthcare giant has settled a talc case.

Johnson & Johnson, meanwhile, isn’t just facing pressure in the courts. The company is also facing scrutiny from members of Congress and federal agencies.

In February 2019, Johnson & Johnson revealed in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is responding to subpoenas and inquiries from the commission and the U.S. Department of Justice related to the safety of its talc products. A company spokesman told the Wall Street Journal the company is cooperating with the government investigations.

Johnson & Johnson said it had also received an inquiry from U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat who represents Washington and the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Murray had sent a letter to Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky in January 2019, asking for information about what the company knew regarding potential asbestos contamination of its talc products and when it knew it.

Her request followed on the heels of an investigative report by Reuters that alleged the company knew for decades that its talc sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos but the company went to great lengths to conceal that information from regulators and the public.

After the story broke in December, Democratic Sen. Ed Markey called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to look into the matter.

“Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder is an iconic consumer product used by countless American families,” Markey wrote in a letter to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. “That the company may have concealed a potentially serious health and safety risk associated with the use of its baby powder is deeply troubling.”