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A New Jersey courtroom has has thrown out an almost $224 million verdict in opposition to Johnson & Johnson that was awarded to 4 individuals who alleged in a lawsuit that they received most cancers from utilizing the corporate’s talcum-powder merchandise.
The three-judge appeals courtroom ordered a brand new trial after ruling that skilled testimony offered in a decrease courtroom on behalf of the plaintiffs was defective. J&J was ordered in 2019 to pay New Jersey residents Douglas Barden, David Etheridge, D’Angela McNeill-George and William Ronning $37.3 million, together with $186.5 million in punitive damages.
The corporate appealed that call the next 12 months, arguing that three specialists chosen to testify through the trial — William Longo, Jacqueline Moline and James Webber — offered flawed or incomplete data. Moline is an occupational medication physician at North Shore College Hospital in Lengthy Island, New York. Longo is a supplies scientist in Georgia, CEO of Micro Analytical Laboratories and a former member of the Nationwide Asbestos Council. Webber is an unbiased environmental well being scientist and guide from Oregon who has accomplished analysis on asbestos contamination in air and water.
Moline by no means concluded that utilizing J&J’s talc led to most cancers previous to the J&J trial, whereas Longo didn’t exactly decide what number of instances the plaintiffs had used the powder, J&J attorneys argued. Webber additionally testified that sure minerals discovered within the child powder, referred to as cleavage fragments, could cause most cancers, however he based mostly that conclusion on an outdated examine from 1980 that wanted additional analysis, J&J additional alleged.
The appeals courtroom agreed with the corporate’s argument that the decrease courtroom mustn’t have allowed the three specialists’ testimony.
“In sum, the trial courtroom erred when it admitted Webber’s and Moline’s testimony about cleavage fragments, and Longo’s extrapolation testimony,” the judges wrote of their opinion. “These errors, taken singularly or collectively, have been dangerous and require the reversal of the jury verdict.”
Hundreds of lawsuits
J&J has spent years battling — and typically dropping — 1000’s of lawsuits alleging that asbestos in J&J’s talcum powder prompted most cancers. In 2019, a Missouri courtroom ordered J&J to pay $4.7 billion in damages to girls who alleged the product gave them most cancers. That quantity was later lowered to $2.1 billion.
Johnson & Johnson maintains that the newborn powder — which it now not sells — is protected and does not trigger most cancers. A U.S. government-led evaluation of 250,000 girls, the biggest such examine to take a look at the query, discovered no sturdy proof linking child powder with ovarian most cancers, though the lead creator of the evaluation referred to as the outcomes “very ambiguous.”
In 2020, the corporate recalled 33,000 bottles of child powder after the Meals and Drum Administration discovered a small quantity of asbestos in a bottle bought on-line. Later that 12 months, J&J stated that 15 assessments of the identical bottle of child powder performed by two laboratories employed by the corporate discovered no asbestos.
Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice chairman of litigation, stated in a press release to CBS MoneyWatch that the appellate courtroom’s choice “resoundingly rejects, once more, the junk science superior by purported specialists paid by the mass tort asbestos bar.”
“This marks the third time in three years that an appellate courtroom has overturned outsized verdicts that asbestos attorneys secured by complicated and deceptive juries with unscientific opinions touting baseless legal responsibility theories,” Haas stated. “The choice appropriately strikes a blow to the guts of the asbestos bar’s improper technique and its meritless talc litigation.”
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs did not instantly reply to a request for remark. Etheridge, Barden and Ronning have died since submitting their go well with, and their members of the family have continued the fits.
