200 NJ Cases Link Cancer To Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder, Other Products

Johnson & Johnson has suffered a big courtroom defeat among hundreds of lawsuits claiming that talc products marketed by the company for feminine hygiene caused ovarian cancer - and 200 N.J. lawsuits are still pending, according to reports.

A jury in St. Louis on Monday night ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the family of Jacqueline Fox of Birmingham, Ala. who died of ovarian cancer after using the company’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower for feminine hygiene, according to FairWarning.org.

Fox was 62 when she died in October after using the talc products for many years, according to the reprort. The jury awarded Fox’s estate $62 million in punitive damages and $10 million in other damages.

About 1,000 cases are pending against Johnson & Johnson in Missouri, and nj.com reports that another 200 have been filed in New Jersey.

Reuters released a statement from Carol Goodrich, a Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman, that said:

“We have no higher responsibility than the health and safety of consumers, and we are disappointed with the outcome of the trial. We sympathize with the plaintiff’s family but firmly believe the safety of cosmetic talc is supported by decades of scientific evidence.”

Jurors voted 10-2 to find Johnson & Johnson and a subsidiary, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies Inc., guilty of negligence, failure to warn and conspiracy to conceal the risks of its products. Jurors awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and tacked on $62 million in punitive damages, according to the Fair Warning website.

The verdict sends a “tremendous signal to J&J and all of the cosmetic companies,” said Jere Beasley, one of the Fox lawyers, in the Fair Warning report. “They’re basically self-regulated and they know they can just basically get away with anything.”

FairWarning reported that the wave of talc lawsuits were triggered by a verdict in October 2013 in a case against J&J, when a federal court jury in Sioux Falls, S.D., found the company guilty of failure to warn of the risk of ovarian cancer from genital use of its talc products, but awarded zero damages to the plaintiff, Deane Berg.

Suspicions about talc and ovarian cancer go back decades, according to the publication, noting that in 1971, British researchers analyzed 13 ovarian tumors under a microscope and found talc particles “deeply embedded’’ in 10.