Johnson & Johnson Bankruptcy Plan Won ’t Halt Industrial Talc Lawsuit

Johnson & Johnson may have used a controversial bankruptcy spinoff to avoid almost 40,000 cosmetic talc lawsuits, but it now must face plaintiffs harmed by industrial talcum powder decades ago. U.S. federal Judge Michael Kaplan ruled earlier this month that the recent bankruptcy plan halting the majority of cases would not apply to this latest class-action lawsuit. The ruling in a New Jersey Superior Court stems from a complaint first brought in 1986. A man claimed his lung disease was caused by asbestos exposure linked to contaminated talc at his job at Windsor Minerals, a mine in Vermont owned by Johnson & Johnson. J&J sold the mine in 1989. The man died in 1994, but his family has reopened the case. They claim new evidence has shown the company was withholding test results and falsifying records, which led to the case being dropped. Through the 1980s, more than a thousand others filed lawsuits against J&J that met similar ends. The recent ruling is expected to gather many of them in a class-action suit. Ruling Reopens Talc Legal Claims Kaplan, who approved J&J’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in February, ruled that the proposed lawsuit was different enough from the cosmetic talc cases that it can move forward. J&J has long maintained that the talc in its products, both cosmetic and industrial, is free from asbestos, a toxic mineral that can cause serious illnesses, including mesothelioma and ovarian cancers. Most everyone ag...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Legal Source Type: news