By Myron Levin, FairWarning
Breaking a string of lopsided courtroom defeats, Johnson & Johnson scored a legal victory Friday when a St. Louis jury rejected the claim of an ovarian cancer victim that she contracted the disease through long time use of the company’s talc powders for feminine hygiene.
The defense verdict in St. Louis Circuit Court followed three plaintiffs’ victories last year in the same state court that resulted in damage awards totaling $197 million against the health care products giant and its talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, Inc.
The plaintiff in the latest case, Nora Daniels of Columbia, Tenn., was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2013 at age 52. The disease is currently in remission. Like the more than 2,000 women with similar claims against J&J and Imerys, she had blamed the disease on regular use of J&J’s Shower to Shower and Johnson’s Baby Powder for genital hygiene.
“We deeply sympathize with the women and families impacted by ovarian cancer,” said J&J spokeswoman Carol Goodrich following the verdict. “The jury’s decision is consistent with the science, research, clinical evidence and decades of studies by medical experts around the world that continue to support the safety of cosmetic talc.’’
More than 300 talc cases are pending in state and federal courts in J&J’s home state of New Jersey. About 470 more are consolidated in Los Angeles County Superior Court. But St. Louis, with more than 1,000 pending claims, has been the epicenter of the litigation. Business groups had disparaged it –until Friday, at least– as a place where big companies could not get a fair trial. The American Tort Reform Association, a business lobby that seeks to limit lawsuits and damage awards, recently named the St. Louis court the country’s “#1 ranked Judicial Hellhole” for producing “monstrous verdicts’’ based on ‘’junk science.”
To win damages, a plaintiff must not only prove that talc can cause ovarian cancer, but that it directly contributed to her contracting the disease.
Talc, the softest of minerals, has a multitude of industrial and consumer uses. It is an ingredient in paints, paper, rubber, roofing and ceramic materials—and even used a food additive, a filler in capsules, pills and cosmetics. Lawyers for Johnson & Johnson and Imerys have stressed talc’s wide range of uses as evidence that it is utterly benign.
But, as FairWarning has reported, suspicions about talc and ovarian cancer go back decades. In 1982, the journal Cancer published the first study showing a statistical link between genital talc use and the disease. Since then, at least 20 more epidemiological studies have found increased rates of ovarian cancer for women who reported using talc for feminine hygiene. Other studies have found no association.
This year, about 22,440 women will receive a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer, according to the American Cancer Society, and about 14,080 will die of the disease.
The disease strikes about one woman in 70. Studies showing a higher rate of ovarian cancer with genital talc use have typically put the increased risk at about 30 percent. That would raise the odds of getting the disease to roughly one in 50.
Additional trials are expected in St. Louis later this year, and the first trial in Los Angeles is scheduled for July. In New Jersey, the litigation is on hold following a state court judge’s ruling that scientific evidence of a causal link between talc and ovarian cancer is too weak to allow it to be presented to a jury. The ruling last September has been appealed by plaintiffs.
Johnson & Johnson faces more than 2,000 liability claims from ovarian cancer victims contending that they contracted the disease from feminine hygiene use of the company’s talc powders–Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower.
This story was reported by FairWarning (www.fairwarning.org), a nonprofit news organization based in Pasadena, Calif., that focuses on public health, consumer and environmental issues.