<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Johnson &amp; Johnson will pay an estimated $700 million to resolve an investigation by more than 40 states into the pharmaceutical firm’s marketing of its talcum powder, according to Bloomberg, following thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn customers about cancer risks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY FACTS</h2>



The tentative agreement will end an ongoing probe into Johnson &amp; Johnson’s talcum-based baby powder and whether the company wrongfully marketed the product,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/j-j-to-pay-700-million-to-settle-states-talc-marketing-probe?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a>&nbsp;to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the deal.



Johnson &amp; Johnson and representatives for state attorneys general involved in the investigation have agreed on the settlement amount but not other terms for the agreement, Bloomberg reported.



The agreement is expected to protect Johnson &amp; Johnson from future lawsuits involving its talc-based baby powder and alleged cancer risks.



Johnson &amp; Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BIG NUMBER</h2>



50,000. That’s how many lawsuits Johnson &amp; Johnson faces over its talcum-based baby powder, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-certifies-johnson-johnson-shareholder-class-action-over-talc-disclosures-2023-12-29/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>. Several cases allege the powder caused several forms of cancer, including ovarian and mesothelioma.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Johnson &amp; Johnson faces allegations it failed to properly warn consumers about potential health risks associated with its talc-based baby powder, including alleged cancer risks. Both Mississippi and New Mexico have sued the company over its marketing, as 42 states and the District of Columbia launched a joint investigation, <a href="https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000200406/a0c68a93-e699-45d6-b3e7-311e8f9c43bb.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according</a> to a securities filing. Attorneys general from several states, including Arizona, North Carolina and Texas, have requested additional information from the company about its marketing tactics, the filing said. Johnson &amp; Johnson—which denies claims against its powder—<a href="https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-subsidiary-to-appeal-bankruptcy-court-ruling-that-deprived-talc-claimants-of-an-equitable-and-efficient-resolution" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">set aside</a> $8.9 billion in its bankruptcy filing last year to resolve some 40,000 cases, though that plan was subsequently <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-17/j-j-weighs-third-bankruptcy-to-resolve-tainted-baby-powder-suits" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shot down</a> by a New Jersey judge.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TANGENT</h2>



In 2018, a Missouri court&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/business/johnson-johnson-talcum-powder.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ordered</a>&nbsp;Johnson &amp; Johnson to pay nearly $4.7 billion to 22 women claiming asbestos in the company’s talcum powder was linked to their cases of ovarian cancer. The judge involved in the case suggested the company had “misrepresented the safety of these products for decades.” Johnson &amp; Johnson appealed the ruling, though the effort was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/06/01/supreme-court-wont-hear-johnson--johnson-challenge-of-2-billion-baby-powder-lawsuit/?sh=1441441e3d6e">shot down&nbsp;</a>by the Supreme Court.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/j-j-to-pay-700-million-to-settle-states-talc-marketing-probe?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_content=business&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">J&amp;J To Pay $700 Million To Settle States’ Talc-Marketing Probe</a>&nbsp;(Bloomberg)

Johnson & Johnson Reaches Settlement In 8.9 Billion Dollar Lawsuit Over Products Containing Talcum Powder

Johnson & Johnson Will Pay $700 Million To Resolve Baby Powder Marketing Probe, Report Says

Johnson &amp; Johnson failed to persuade a Missouri trial judge to set aside a July verdict awarding a record $4.69 billion to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in the company’s Baby Powder and other talc products.



The healthcare company faces thousands of lawsuits over the safety of talc in its Baby Powder, a fixture of its consumer products division that has been core to J&amp;J’s reputation as a family friendly company.



The trial was the first in which plaintiffs claimed that asbestos fibers in J&amp;J’s talc caused ovarian cancer. It relied on unsealed internal company documents detailing J&amp;J’s alleged knowledge of asbestos contamination since at least the 1970s.



The company, which says its Baby Powder does not contain asbestos and is safe, in a statement said the failed motion was merely a formal step required before appealing the verdict.



READ MORE|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/health/2018/12/18/johnson-johnson-moves-to-limit-impact-of-report-on-asbestos-in-baby-powder/">Johnson &amp; Johnson Moves to Limit Impact of Report on Asbestos in Baby Powder</a>



“The same judge has denied similar motions on prior verdicts in his court that were ultimately overturned by the appellate courts. We are confident this verdict will also be overturned on appeal,” J&amp;J said.



Judge Rex Burlison in the ruling on Wednesday said the jury’s decision and the large award of punitive damages was justified based on J&amp;J’s “particularly reprehensible conduct” as evidenced during trial. He denied the company’s request to overturn the verdict, saying the women had presented sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict.



A jury in July awarded $550 million in compensatory damages and $4.14 billion in punitive damages.



Reuters on Dec. 14 published a special report detailing the company documents that sent J&amp;J shares tumbling. They have dropped more than 13 percent since Friday, wiping out more than $45 billion in the company’s market value.



Shares on Wednesday were off about 2 percent at $127.88.



Mark Lanier, the women’s lawyer during trial, in a statement said plaintiffs were pleased with Burlison’s decision.



<h5 class="wp-block-heading">DECADES-LONG USE</h5>



The women and their families said decades-long use of baby powder and other cosmetic talc products caused their illness. They allege the company knew its talc was contaminated with asbestos since at least the 1970s but failed to warn consumers about the risks.



While plaintiffs in the long-running litigation in the past had claimed talc itself causes ovarian cancer, plaintiff lawyers in recent months shifted their claims to allege asbestos in the talc causes mesothelioma, a cancer closely linked to asbestos exposure, and ovarian cancer.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">J&amp;J denies that its talc products ever contained asbestos and says decades of studies and regulatory assessments show its talc to be safe.</blockquote>



Missouri’s appeals court has overturned two prior ovarian cancer talc verdicts against J&amp;J on technical legal grounds, saying the decisions could not stand following a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting where companies can be sued for personal injuries.



S&amp;P 500 ends flat in choppy trade



The company in its September motion made a similar argument, telling Burlison that the women, the majority of whom were from out-of-state, had no right to sue in Missouri.



J&amp;J also said Lanier during the trial “substituted proof and evidence with misleading and inflammatory graphics,” including an image depicting J&amp;J pushing a woman off a cliff into ovarian cancer.



But Burlison in his Wednesday ruling said the cases rightly belonged in Missouri court due to J&amp;J’s connection to the state.



More than 9,700 talc lawsuits, the vast majority of those J&amp;J faces, allege asbestos-laced cosmetic talc caused ovarian cancer, while a smaller number claim its use led to mesothelioma. -Reuters



<ul><li>Manas Mishra&nbsp;</li></ul>

RC1183C83000

J&J Loses Bid to Have $4.7 Billion Talc Verdict Set Aside, Vows to Appeal

&nbsp;Johnson &amp; Johnson on Monday scrambled to contain fallout from a Reuters report that the healthcare conglomerate knew for decades that cancer-causing asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder, taking out full-page newspaper ads defending its product and practices, and readying its chief executive for his first television interview since investors erased tens of billions of dollars from the company’s market value.



J&amp;J shares fell nearly 3 percent Monday, closing at $129.14 in New York Stock Exchange trading. That drop was on top of the 10 percent plunge that wiped out about $40 billion of the company’s market capitalization following the Reuters report Friday. J&amp;J also announced Monday that it would be repurchasing up to $5 billion of its common stock.



Senator Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, on Friday sent a letter to the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration calling on the agency to investigate the findings in the Reuters report to determine whether J&amp;J misled regulators and whether its Baby Powder products threaten public health and safety.



J&amp;J Chief Executive Alex Gorsky, in his first interview since the Reuters article was published, defended the company during an appearance on CNBC’s “Mad Money” with host Jim Cramer on Monday night. J&amp;J knew for decades about the presence of small amounts of asbestos in its products dating back to as early as 1971, a Reuters examination of company memos, internal reports and other confidential documents showed. In response to the report, J&amp;J said on Friday that “any suggestion that Johnson &amp; Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false.”



A Monday full-page ad from J&amp;J — headlined “Science. Not sensationalism.” — ran in newspapers including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The ad asserted that J&amp;J has scientific evidence its talc is safe and beneficial to use. “If we had any reasons to believe our talc was unsafe, it would be off our shelves,” the ad said.



J&amp;J rebutted Reuters’ report in a lengthy written critique of the article and a video from Gorsky. In the written critique, posted on the company’s website, J&amp;J said Reuters omitted information it supplied to the news organization that demonstrated the healthcare conglomerate’s Baby Powder is safe and does not cause cancer; that J&amp;J’s baby powder has repeatedly been tested and found to be asbestos-free; and that the company has cooperated with the U.S. FDA and other regulators around the world to provide information requested over decades.



“Since tests for asbestos in talc were first developed, J&amp;J’s Baby Powder has never contained asbestos,” Gorsky said in the video. He added that regulators “have always found our talc to be asbestos-free.”



A Reuters spokeswoman on Monday said the agency “stands by its reporting.”



Reuters’ investigation found that while most tests in past decades found no asbestos in J&amp;J talc and talc products, tests on Baby Powder conducted by scientists at Mount Sinai Medical Center in 1971 and Rutgers University in 1991, as well as by labs for plaintiffs in cancer lawsuits, found small amounts of asbestos. In 1972, a University of Minnesota scientist found what he called “incontrovertible asbestos” in a sample of Shower to Shower. Other tests by J&amp;J’s own contract labs and others periodically found small amounts of asbestos in talc from mines that supplied the mineral for Baby Powder and other cosmetic products into the early 2000s.



The company did not report to the FDA three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 that found asbestos in the company’s talc.



The Reuters story drew no conclusions about whether talc itself causes ovarian cancer. Asbestos, however, is a carcinogen. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has listed asbestos-contaminated talc as a carcinogen since 1987. Reuters also found that J&amp;J tested only a fraction of the talc powder it sold. The company never adopted a method for increasing the sensitivity of its tests that was recommended to the company by consultants in 1973 and in a published report in a peer-review scientific journal in 1991.



The ad J&amp;J ran in newspapers Monday also pointed to an online talc fact page the company created with “independent studies from leading universities, research from medical journals and third-party opinions.”



That website has changed since early December, according to a Reuters review of online archives.



The website, for instance, no longer contains a section headlined “Conclusions from Global Authorities” that as recently as Dec. 5 listed organizations including the U.S. FDA, the European Union and Health Canada as among entities that have “reviewed and analyzed all available data and concluded that the evidence is insufficient to link talc use to cancer.”



On Dec. 14, the day Reuters published its report, that section of the website had been removed. It is not clear exactly when the online page changed.



The Canadian government released a draft report this month that found a “consistent and statistically significant positive association” between talc exposure and ovarian cancer. The draft report also said that talc meets criteria to be deemed toxic.



The draft report put forth proposed conclusions that are subject to a public comment period and confirmation in a so-called final screening assessment, Health Canada said.



If the conclusions are confirmed, Canadian officials will consider adding talc to a government list of toxic substances and implementing measures to prohibit or restrict use of talc in some cosmetics, non-prescription drugs and health products, Health Canada said.



A J&amp;J spokeswoman said the company removed the website section after the Canadian government issued the draft report. “We chose to be conservative while that draft is under review,” the spokeswoman said.



While J&amp;J has dominated the talc powder market for more than 100 years, the products contributed less than 0.5 percent of J&amp;J’s $76.5 billion in revenue last year. &#8211; Reuters



<ul><li>Mike Spector, Lisa Girion and Ankur Banerjee </li></ul>

Tag: Baby Powder

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Johnson & Johnson Will Pay $700 Million To Resolve Baby Powder Marketing Probe, Report Says

J&J Loses Bid to Have $4.7 Billion Talc Verdict Set Aside, Vows to Appeal

Johnson & Johnson Moves to Limit Impact of Report on Asbestos in Baby Powder