Johnson & Johnson to pay $4.7bn in damages in talc ovarian cancer case - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44816805 Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $4.7bn (£3.6bn) in damages to 22 women who alleged that its talc products caused them to develop ovarian cancer. A jury in the US state of Missouri initially awarded $550m in compensation and added $4.1bn in punitive damages. The verdict comes as the pharmaceutical giant battles some 9,000 legal cases involving its signature baby powder. J&J said it was "deeply disappointed" and plans to appeal. In the six-week trial, the women and their families said they developed ovarian cancer after using baby powder and other talc products for decades. Of the 22 women represented in this case, six have died from ovarian cancer. Their lawyers alleged the company knew its talc was contaminated with asbestos since the 1970s but failed to warn consumers about the risks. The verdict is the largest payout J&J has faced over the allegations. Punitive damages are often reduced by the trial judge or on appeal, and J&J has succeeded in having several jury verdicts overturned, some of them on technical grounds. A previous ruling in 2017 by a California jury awarded $417m (£323.4m) to a woman who said she developed ovarian cancer after using the firm's products, including baby powder. However, a judge later overturned that verdict and several other legal challenges by J&J are yet to be decided. The majority of the 22 women were from outside the state of Missouri. The presentation of their combined cases at such a court is known as forum shopping. This will be one of the elements challenged by Johnson & Johnson at appeal. Johnson & Johnson said: "Every verdict against Johnson & Johnson in this court that has gone through the appeals process has been reversed and the multiple errors present in this trial were worse than those in the prior trials which have been reversed."

Why the fuck would you allow this, when the evidence shows definitely that they are guilty of gross negligence at the very least.

If you have enough money and lawyers companies are completely above the law. No executive of a company that killed people, whether through asbestos, talc, fossil fuels, tobacco, alchohol, or drugs will face punishment.

fucking asbestos in talc powder of all things... even Satan's soul would be a better thing Why not even bother to change it? It's fucking asbestos ffs. You'd think this was gonna cause some SERIOUS problems, right?

Fucking despicable. I hate mega-corporations.

oh fuck off

companies are people that have a license to kill

Uhm, what’s the actual evidence here? Reading the entire article, the link seems tenuous at best - awarding that much money seems kinda insane unless there’s pretty definite evidence to show that the talc powder actually caused their cancer.

the asbestos that contaminated it since the 70s definitely doesn't have a link to the cancer.

where did it say that? I read "hasn't contained since the 70's" and "FDA found no evidences of asbestos" in the article. Is there something i missed?

The evidence linking perineal dusting of talc to ovarian cancer is all over the place, and it's hard to draw any real conclusions. More importantly, studies that looked at talc-dusted condoms and diaphragms found no link, even though internalisation of talc would be much easier. See this review for more details.

It would be great if executives (and upper-level management in general) were held accountable for the crimes of their corporations regardless of their supposed personal involvement. If it can be proven that a company did wrong in some holistic capacity (that is, the company did wrong, not some random employee who happened to be on the clock at the time of their crime), then it should automatically follow that those charged with its operation are responsible even if by means of neglect. It would incentivize higher-ups to keep their underlings and practices in line, and perhaps add a significant caveat for the ruthless types of people who ascend to these positions with the goal of fulfilling their less than venerable ambitions. Charging a company with civil and criminal violations is stupid to begin with precisely because a it cannot be tried, imprisoned, or killed. A commercial entity is no more than a title binding individuals together, and it ought to be those individuals who face the consequences of their group's wrongdoing. Executives and management who lack scruples should fear for their freedom and lives to the point where they are either driven to make sure everything and everyone under their purview adheres to the law, or driven from their offices by stress.

deeply disappointed get tfuck What's really disappointing is a household brand selling a product despite the possibility of it posing a health risk.

Simplifying all that, having monetary fines being the primary form of punishing corporations, combined with a complete lack of personal responsibility from executives, enables mega corporations to see breaking the law as a business expense rather than as an ethical issue.

It also says the women have been using it for decades. This is mostly older women in the lawsuit.

People should note that talc and asbestos are co-minerals (I suspect a geologist will tell me that's the wrong word). It's really difficult to know if the talc is contaminated with asbestos.

Given the cost of healthcare in the US, I'm not so sure it is.

The situation is… not simple. Asbestos refers to any one of six minerals that have crystallised in an asbestiform habit: chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, tremolite, actinolite, and anthophyllite. The former is a phyllosilicate, while the other five are amphiboles. Chrysotile, amosite, and crocidolite are specific names for the asbestiform habit of the serpentine subgroup, the cummingtonite-grunerite series, and riebeckite respectively. All of them can occur in nonasbestiform habit as well, and in fact very commonly do. Many mined talc deposits for example are not pure talc, and contain a large proportion of nonasbestiform amphibole minerals. Muddying the situation further is the fact that talc itself can occur in asbestiform habit. [ref 1, ref 2] The NIOSH defines an “asbestos fibre” as any particle longer than 5 µm with an aspect ratio greater than 3:1, but does not place a limit on the width of the fibres. In talc samples containing nonasbestiform amphiboles, the crystals of nonasbestiform amphiboles, and their cleavage fragments especially, can be counted as “asbestos fibres”. [ref 3] The hazard of such cleavage fragments is debated, and regulatory bodies differ in their views on them. [ref 4, ref 5, ref 6] Differentiating such fragments from true asbestiform fibres appears to be possible but would require a revision of the NIOSH guidelines. [ref 1, ref 3] Everything I just mentioned is somewhat irrelevant here, as cosmetic talc is at least 95% pure talc and has been for a long while (at least 1976, if not earlier). Only industrial talc users and talc miners really need to worry about asbestos contamination. While it is possible that J&J was trying to cover up the presence of actual asbestos in their talc, I wouldn’t be surprised if their primary concern was to avoid confusion and misunderstanding amongst the general public. Most people aren’t even aware that asbestos is not a single mineral, or even a single mineral group, and J&J probably wanted to avoid having to explain all of the above to them.

The value of life has been very clearly established as being about US$5m to US$10m. That's how lawsuits normally calculate it.

Spinning it as though I myself was the one who injured someone is missing the mark spectacularly. The analogy is complete nonsense because $2 million to a random joe is completely devestating, while $2 million to a massive corporation is pennies. If we want to actually be FAIR we should be calculating lawsuits as a fraction of income of the plaintiff, because otherwise we're talking about wildly different de facto punishments depending on your wealth. The current system is so ridiculously unfair that if a corporation is big enough their negligence can KILL PEOPLE and their bottom line is only marginally affected.