Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson is offering $6.5 billion to settle most lawsuits brought by women who developed mesothelioma, an ovarian cancer linked to the use of talc-based products such as talcum powder. J&J asked for three months to reach an agreement with […]
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The pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson offers 6.5 billion dollars to resolve most lawsuits filed by women who have become ill with mesotheliomaa ovarian cancer linked to the use of products based on talc as the talcum powder. J&J asked three months of time to reach a agreement with all the appellants, including those who may become so in the future. These are 99% of talc-related causes: 54 thousand are brought together in one single procedure In the New Jersey. J&J has always denied that its products contain asbestos and they were carcinogenic, but said the majority of plaintiffs have already accepted the settlement. “This plan is the culmination of our consensual resolution strategy announced in October,” she said in a statement Erik Haas, deputy director of group legal affairs. The company, he explains, “has worked with the lawyers representing the vast majority of the claimants to find a solution to this dispute, which we anticipate with this plan”.
According to J&J the offer will be accepted by 75% of the injured parties, thus terminating an important part of the dispute. Among the lawyers of those who sued, however, there are different opinions: “I believe that the plan announced will bring peace to our clients and to the thousands of women who fought alongside us in the search for justice”, declared the lawyer Jim Order, which represents approximately 21 thousand applicants. Others, however, accuse the group of “fill the ballot boxes” gaining support from lawyers whose clients have types of gynecological cancer that lack a strong scientific correlation to talc. In recent years, J&J has already been sentenced several times to pay millions in compensation for tumors caused by its products: the heaviest sentence came in 2017, when a jury of Los Angeles condemned the multinational to pay 417 million dollars to a woman who had ovarian cancer.
