J&J Told to Pay $300 Million More by Talc-Cancer Jury

(Bloomberg) -- Johnson & Johnson was ordered by a jury to pay $300 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed her rare asbestos-related cancer on decades of daily use of the company's talc-based products.

The ruling brings to $325 million the amount the state-court jury in Manhattan said J&J should pay Donna Olson and her husband over her cancer that she blamed on J&J's baby powder and its former Shower-to-Shower product.

The total verdict is one of the highest in more than two years of litigation over J&J talc products.

Kim Montagnino, a J&J spokeswoman, said the company would appeal the jury's findings because it believes the trial was flawed. “Of all the verdicts against Johnson & Johnson that have been through the appellate process, every one has been overturned,” she said in an emailed statement.

J&J faces more than 14,000 claims that its powders caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. The company denies its products ever contained the carcinogen and argues talc doesn't cause the life-threatening illnesses. Olson has mesothelioma in her lungs, according to court filings.

“With this verdict, yet another jury has rejected J&J's misleading claims that its talc was free of asbestos,” Jerome Block, the couple's lawyer said in an emailed statement. “The internal J&J documents that the jury saw, once more laid bare the shocking truth of decades of cover-up, deception and concealment by J&J of the asbestos found in talc baby powder.”

The case is Olson v. Brenntag, No. 190328/2017, New York Supreme Court (Manhattan).

To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware at jfeeley@bloomberg.net;Margaret Cronin Fisk in Detroit at mcfisk@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider

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