Johnson & Johnson Will Petition The US Supreme Court To Annul The LTL Bankruptcy Reversal

Requesting a Supreme Court hearing could further delay Johnson's Baby Powder ovarian cancer trials for months

Friday, March 24, 2023 - The latest news in the ongoing Johnson's Baby Powder ovarian cancer legal situation is that the Third Circuit court of Appeals has refused to re-hear the plaintiff's successful appeal of the LTL management bankruptcy scheme. LTL management is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that was created to hold 38,000 ovarian cancer lawsuits and billions of dollars in cash. A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the New Jersey bankruptcy because the company was not in financial distress since Johnson & Johnson promised to fund the shell corporation with up to $61 billion. According to BloombergNews, "The company said it would fund a victims' trust worth at least $2 billion. Judge Michael Kaplan of the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey ruled last year that the LTL case was a legitimate use of the bankruptcy system and would yield more practical and efficient outcomes."

Johnson & Johnson told reporters at Reuters that they will appeal the Third Circuit's decision to negate LTL's bankruptcy to the US Supreme Court, an avenue that seems unlikely to amount to much for the company. Johnson & Johnson's previous attempt at appealing talcum powder cancer case to the US Supreme Court was met with the court refusing to hear the case that awarded 22 women with ovarian cancer a staggering $2 billion, mostly from punitive damages. Johnson & Johnson's corporate behavior in failing to warn their customers about the potential health hazards asbestos in their talc presented was deemed by the appeals court judge in Missouri to be "reprehensible," and that sentiment was reflected in the lottery-like jury award. US Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh was forced to recuse himself from hearing the Johnson's Baby Powder cancer appeal because his father E. Edward Kavanaugh served as the president of the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC) an American trade association that functioned as a quasi-regulatory board that influenced talc asbestos testing decisions at the Food and Drug Administration for decades. "Everett Edward Kavanaugh was the head of the Council for two decades and is the father of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald J. Trump in July 2018," according to Wikipedia. Some think that the CSC did the bidding of Johnson & Johnson in convincing the FDA not to test talc for the presence of asbestos and also not to require cosmetic companies to test their products using more modern sophisticated talc/asbestos testing methods that would have shown that, according to Reuters, Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in their talc supply.

The Johnson & Johnson Supreme Court petition could take months to resolve and allow the company to benefit from the delay. Many of the 38,000 ovarian cancer plaintiffs will die from the disease within five years of their initial diagnosis, leaving it up to their surviving loved ones to refile a claim. Bloomberg reported that Supreme Court reversal was unlikely as denying LTL's bankruptcy would serve to "discourage other healthy companies from isolating mass tort liabilities into a specially-created subsidiary and shielding the parent company from further litigation."

Information provided by TalcumPowderCancerLawsuit.com, a website devoted to providing news about talcum powder ovarian cancer lawsuits, as well as medical research and findings.