WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a petition to overturn a previous verdict ordering Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to pay $2.1 billion in damages to 22 women and their families who claimed that the pharmaceutical giant’s products have caused them ovarian cancer.
On June 1, the court rejected the company’s request to further review a Missouri jury’s decision from cases that were combined into a single trial back in 2018.
Filings note that the writ of certiorari was denied, especially with conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh taking no part in the consideration of the decision.
Alito owns investments in Johnson & Johnson. Kavanaugh’s father headed a trade association that lobbied against labeling talc as a potential carcinogen.
What happens now?
The denial of its petition means that J&J is bound to pay the damages as ordered by the lower courts.
Earlier, a Missouri jury awarded the women who initially sued a verdict of $4.7 billion. After, a state appellate court dropped two women from the class action lawsuit and reduced the award to around $2.1 billion.
In what could be a major breakthrough of the ongoing talc crisis, the jury found that J&J produced talc products that contain asbestos and asbestos-laced talc.
The jury, backed by many medical and scientific studies, argued that talc can cause ovarian cancer, including other ailments such as mesothelioma and asbestosis.
Legal counsel for J&J has long disputed these points, citing “decades of studies” proving that their products were safe.
In October 2019, J&J, however, recalled over 33,000 bottles of its Johnson’s brand baby powder because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found a small amount of asbestos in a single bottle. The FDA indicated that the recall was voluntary.
J&J then hired its own labs to test the same bottle the FDA tested and others in the same lot and concluded that there was no detectable trace of asbestos.
The World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classify perineal use of talc-based body powder as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
Health Canada, too, concluded that talc could be “associated with ovarian cancer when using certain self-care products containing talc in the female genital area.”
Ovarian cancer incidence
The American Cancer Society’s data suggests that there are 21,410 new cases in 2021. Some 13,770 deaths are also expected in the same year.
The North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NACCR) indicates 10.9 cases per 100,000 for incidence of ovarian cancer.
National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the death rates were 6.7 per 100,000, based on data from between 2014 to 2018.
The National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program data also shows that five-year relative survival rates are at 48% by all stages of diagnosis.
Product liability lawsuits
There are currently 30,000 ongoing lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson. All of them claim harm from its talc powder, including the potential presence of asbestos particles.
Like in the case, the high court declined to review, lawyers in these cases have argued that Johnson & Johnson leadership was aware of the cancer risks of talc and potential asbestos exposure.
An investigation conducted by investigative journalists at Reuters in 2018 found that J&J leadership knew for decades that their talc could be asbestos-laced.
Asbestos and mesothelioma
Talc is a clay mineral found in the Earth in close proximity to another mineral, asbestos. Mesothelioma cases are often attributed to instances of prolonged exposure to asbestos.
Asbestos has been commonly used in construction and thermal insulation as a fire retardant until well into the 1970s.
In addition to the instances of ovarian cancer, a mesothelioma diagnosis could have been tied to talc-based cosmetic products including J&J’s popular talc-based products
