J&J vows appeal after US jury hits it with record $1.5 billion talc cancer award

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Reuters

December 23, 2025 5:14 AM EST Updated 11 hours ago


Dec 22 (Reuters) - A Baltimore jury ordered Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and its subsidiaries to pay over $1.5 billion to a woman who claimed decades of exposure to asbestos in the company’s talc-based products caused her peritoneal mesothelioma, a form of cancer.

Jurors in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Maryland, on Monday found the company, two of its subsidiaries and spinoff Kenvue (KVUE.N) liable for failing to warn plaintiff Cherie Craft that its baby powder contained asbestos.

Johnson & Johnson said it will appeal the jury’s decision, which the plaintiff's law firm said was the largest-ever sum awarded against J&J for a single plaintiff.

The award to Craft, who was diagnosed with mesothelioma in January 2024, includes $59.84 million in compensatory damages and punitive damages of $1 billion against J&J and $500 million against Pecos River Talc - a J&J subsidiary, according to court documents. The case follows a California jury decision earlier in December that awarded $40 million to two women who said the company's baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-vows-appeal-after-us-jury-hits-it-with-record-15-billion-talc-cancer-award-2025-12-23/

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[pansypoo53219]

1. pay up j & j.

[Warpy]

2. This will be greatly reduced and it should be

Asbestos exists naturally in talc. Back when I was a kid, it was considered an acceptable risk, we were surrounded by asbestos in floor tiles, house siding, furnace cement, pipe insulation. It was very useful stuff and the scandal really didn't break until large clusters of rare lung cancers started showing up in workers and their families.

I suppose the reductin in this judgment will come based on whether cases of lung disease can be directily attributed to appropriate use of the baby powder or if the cases are mainly among unprotected workers from miners through packagers.

[Multichromatic]

3. No the settlement shouldn't be reduced.

I don't care if the 1.5 billion dollar settlement bankrupts Johnson and Johnson. This is a problem they have know about since the 1950's.

They have actively lied about it and tried to cover it up since the 1970's. J&J KNEW it was harmful and would financially hurt their business. They only EVER cared about keeping this all a secret to protect profits.

J&J did what lots of corporation love to do. Commission a phoney favorable "scientific" study to prove how safe their product was. It was all false. A previous 1979 NIOSH study in The Journal of Environmental Pathology and Toxicology found “significant increase” in “respiratory cancer mortality” among the talc miners.

A lying criminal corporation doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt and they should not have the settlement reduced. J&J can afford to pay damages for all the people they have hurt and killed over the years from cancer.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/

[BumRushDaShow]

4. "we were surrounded by asbestos in floor tiles, house siding, furnace cement, pipe insulation."

I used asbestos mitts in the lab to take stuff out of a muffle furnace (where we used it for analysis like "ashing" and the temp for it there was set to 500C, which is 900+ F).

The issue is that as long as the fibers from the material are intact, then it is generally "okay" (in quotes). The problem is this material, many decades later, is crumbling, and fabric woven with it has been experiencing dry rot, sending the stuff airborne, where it can be breathed in.

I expect the problem is that since J&J sourced the talc globally, there would be some variation in composition that testing (at points in the past) was not comprehensive enough to get lot consistency for some max level of contamination.

There was/is a similar issue with vermiculite (used for insulation and gardening) that was sourced from a particular mine that had been contaminated with asbestos.