Talcum Powder Lawsuits Well Into MDL Process
The Johnson & Johnson's baby powder lawsuits were consolidated in October and are now progressing through the MDL process.
Saturday, December 31, 2016 - Talcum powder ovarian cancer lawsuits were consolidated into multidistrict litigation in early October, and claims continue to roll in almost three months into the nationwide proceedings. Both sides initially supported the consolidation and have been rolling through the early stages of the MDL. Leadership counsel for the MDL has already been selected, and there are a number of pretrial proceedings that are well under way as the litigation works towards the first bellwether trials.
In early October, the JPML ruled that the arguments made in the motion to transfer satisfied all the qualifications necessary for the litigation to be centralized. There were a sufficient amount of actions in the motion to transfer, in addition to potential tag-alongs, to necessitate the creation of an MDL to streamline proceedings going forward. Those actions also shared enough common questions of fact to all be included in the same MDL, and the litigation for most of them had not progressed so far in their home districts to negate the utility of multidistrict litigation.
After less than a week of deliberation, the JPML decided to place the litigation in New Jersey, where the defendant, Johnson & Johnson, had preferred the MDL to be centralized. Both the defense and most of the plaintiffs preferred the litigation to be centralized, though there were a number of other districts to which the plaintiffs had preferred the actions to be consolidated. Southern Illinois and the middle district of Georgia were other possibilities that the JPML decided did not best serve the interests of the parties involved.
Complaints from lawyers representing plaintiffs who did not support the transfer of the litigation into an MDL were considered and addressed by the JPML. In response to the grievances that claimed too many talcum powder lawsuits had already progressed too far to benefit from consolidation, the panel pointed out that many state courts were already working in concert concerning the Johnson & Johnson's baby powder lawsuits and that this process would only be support by consolidating those efforts before a single federal court.
The JPML also responded to the claims that the unique issues brought up by each talcum powder lawsuit would overshadow the common questions of fact they shared. The JPML claimed that the main question of fact, that Johnson & Johnson failed to warn consumers of the medically researched connection between their talcum powder products and ovarian cancer, was shared among all the lawsuits in question.
The talcum powder lawyers representing plaintiffs in federal cases will now coordinate their efforts and begin pretrial proceedings in the near future before the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The headquarters of Johnson & Johnson are based in this district, which was likely a strong reason the JPML decided to centralize the MDL before the court. The decision to transfer the litigation into multidistrict litigation was announced in a panel order released on October 4. There has been no indication as to whether a lump sum settlement will eventually bring the litigation to an end anytime soon.
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