A Los Angeles court docket orders the pharma big to pay damages to the household of Mae Moore, who died of mesothelioma in 2021.
Printed On 7 Oct 2025
Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $966m to the household of a girl who died from mesothelioma, discovering the corporate liable within the newest lawsuit alleging its child powder merchandise trigger most cancers.
The court docket in Los Angeles handed down the ruling late on Monday.
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The pharmaceutical big has to pay the household of Mae Moore, who died in 2021. The household sued the corporate the identical 12 months, claiming Johnson & Johnson’s talc child powder merchandise contained asbestos fibres that brought about her uncommon most cancers. The jury ordered the corporate to pay $16m in compensatory damages and $950m in punitive damages, based on court docket filings.
The decision might be diminished on enchantment as america Supreme Courtroom has discovered that punitive damages ought to usually be not more than 9 instances compensatory damages.
Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vp of litigation, stated in an announcement that the corporate plans to right away enchantment, calling the decision “egregious and unconstitutional”.
“The plaintiff attorneys on this Moore case primarily based their arguments on ‘junk science’ that by no means ought to have been offered to the jury,” Haas charged.
The corporate has stated its merchandise are secure, don’t comprise asbestos and don’t trigger most cancers. This isn’t the primary time Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay damages to a household after a lawsuit that alleged a hyperlink between most cancers and its child powder merchandise.
In 2016, a Missouri court docket ordered the corporate to pay $72m to the household of Jacqueline Fox, who died of ovarian most cancers.
In 2024, Johnson & Johnson was additionally ordered to pay $700m to settle lawsuits alleging it misled shoppers about security after an investigation introduced by 43 state attorneys basic.
J&J stopped promoting talc-based child powder within the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. By 2023, it had ended talc-based child powder gross sales as properly.
Trey Branham, one of many attorneys representing Moore’s household, stated after the decision that his workforce is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will lastly settle for duty for these mindless deaths”.
Hundreds of lawsuits
J&J is going through lawsuits from greater than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they have been recognized with most cancers after utilizing its child powder and different talc merchandise, based on court docket filings. The variety of lawsuits alleging talc brought about mesothelioma is a small subset of those instances with the overwhelming majority involving ovarian most cancers claims.
J&J has sought to resolve the litigation via chapter, a proposal that has been rejected 3 times by federal courts.
Lawsuits alleging talc brought about mesothelioma weren’t a part of the final chapter proposal. The corporate has beforehand settled a few of these claims however has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in latest months.
Up to now 12 months, J&J has been hit with a number of substantial verdicts in mesothelioma instances, however Monday’s is among the many largest. The corporate has received a number of the mesothelioma trials, together with final week in South Carolina, the place a jury discovered J&J not liable.
