J&J Slumps on $4.7 Billion Award to Cancer Patients
- by Ruby West
- in Health Care
- — Jul 13, 2018
A jury in Missouri, United States, ordered multinational pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson to pay $4.7 billion (Rs 32,169 crore) in damages to 22 women who claimed they had developed ovarian cancer after using the company's talc products, BBC reported on Friday.
They allege the company knew its talc was contaminated with asbestos since at least the 1970s but failed to warn consumers about the risks.
Most of the women in St Louis trial used baby powder, but others used Shower-to-Shower, another of Johnson & Johnson's talc-based products.
Jurors announced the award for compensatory damages Thursday in a lawsuit that included 22 plaintiffs.
The jury awarded the $550 million (around Rs 3,800 crore) to the petitioners, who had claimed that the asbestos found in the product was carcinogenic. On Thursday, Lanier highlighted results he said showed asbestos both in talc mines and the baby powder itself. Johnson & Johnson sought to protect the image of Baby Powder as "their sacred cow", he said.
Giant black granite sarcophagus unearthed in Egypt
Next to her, a glabrous head was found, which archaeologists consider to depict the owner of the tomb. Experts are also confident that they have solved the longstanding mystery of the "screaming mummy".
GLOW gets Emmy nomination love, no luck for WWE
The show, which was canceled after Roseanne Barr's racist tweet last month, was skipped over for Outstanding Comedy Series . The 70th Annual Primetime Emmys will be held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles , California on September 17.
Chelsea fires manager Antonio Conte after 2 years in charge
In May, Napoli appointed Carlo Ancelotti to replace Sarri amid speculation that the latter could take the Chelsea job. Selected for both the 1994 World Cup and Euro 2000 squads in which Italy reached the final of both.
Johnson & Johnson has been hit with its biggest penalty yet over the allegation that its talcum powders cause cancer.
Johnson & Johnson vehemently denies that their product is unsafe and vowed to appeal the verdict. Concerns about a link between talc and ovarian cancer started surfacing around 1971, when scientists wrote about finding talc particles embedded in ovarian and cervical tumor tissue. Bicks asked. "Does that make common sense, when Johnson & Johnson is doing all this testing?" Divan writes that despite the eye-catching headlines, in the majority of the talc lawsuits (more than 9,000 as of the first quarter), which have produced higher damage awards, the company has been able to overturn most of the unfavorable rulings.
The company has, since then, been sued by thousands of women and in August 2017, it was ordered by a Los Angeles jury to pay damages of Dollars 417 million to a hospital receptionist, who developed ovarian cancer after using Johnson's Baby Powder for decades.
The women who sued, whose jobs range from school bus driver to executive director of a job-retraining program, come from states including Pennsylvania, California, Arizona and NY. Several other legal challenges by J&J are pending. Previous talc-cancer trials have focused on claims that the talc itself, rather than asbestos, causes ovarian cancer, or that asbestos in talc causes mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. The U.S. Supreme Court has said such punishment awards must be proportional to compensatory damage verdicts that underlie them.
Johnson & Johnson has faced multiple trials in St. Louis over ovarian-cancer claims, losing four of the first five to go to trial.
