The Billion Dollar Jury Award Against Johnson & Johnson Will Probably be Significantly Reduced
Even if Johnson's gets away with paying less for its negligence chances are it will still cost tens of billions to settle the thousands of lawsuits against them
Friday, January 25, 2019 - Reports from Bloomberg legal analysts predict that Johnson & Johnson will pay far less than the $4.7 billion that was awarded to 22 women that claimed that Johnson's Baby Powder contributed to their developing ovarian cancer. There are a number of reasons cited for the analyst's opinion such as the fact that 23 of the last 25 largest jury awards were "reversed or dramatically reduced" or were rendered against companies that did not have the assets to pay the award. The reasons given for overturning or reducing the largest jury awards, in general, is to offset juries that have been inflamed by the alleged negligence of the defendant or to implement court-ordered jury award limits. One of the two cases that have not been reversed or reduced is the $4.69 billion verdict where jurors were incensed that Johnson & Johnson knew as long ago as 1971 that Johnson's Baby Powder talc could contain asbestos, a known carcinogenic and chose to ignore this fact. The award is also being appealed by lawyers for JNJ that argue that each of the 22 plaintiffs is dissimilar and in need of separate trials. It would not be unusual to see the Johnson's Baby Powder case reduced by 50 - 90% based on the results of the 25 largest cases that were appealed. National talcum powder lawyers handling cases from individual people harmed by talcum powder cancer.
Before one starts to applaud Johnson and Johnson for its legal efforts in their attempt to reverse the jury award one should know that enormous jury awards, reduced or not, generate media publicity that encourages others to file suit. The recent record $4.69 billion dollar award made headlines for weeks in the US and around the world. Legal experts estimate that it could cost JNJ around $20 billion if it were to settle the nearly 12,000 cases that have now been filed since the billion-dollar jury award last year. There are 26 trials slated to go to court against JNJ in 2019, three times as many as 2018, the previous year. In addition to the publicity generated by the billion-dollar jury award against JNJ, Reuter recently published a story that alleges that information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that Johnson's executives have known all along that talcum powder contains asbestos and worried for their customer's long-term health from the everyday usage of their powders and lotions. Reuters claims that JNJ also deliberately kept the asbestos baby powder finding from government regulators by lying to them. Still, other investigators have determined that once JNJ was certain that their talcum powder contained asbestos, the company redirected their advertising towards African American women, a demographic the company deemed to be less well informed. For decades, black women were "race shamed" and encouraged to use Johnson's Baby Powder for feminine hygiene purposes in order to smell as good as their white female counterparts.
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