More Delays Can Be Expected In Talcum Powder Cancer Trials
Plaintiff attorneys are proceeding whether or not J & J tries to further deny their clients day in court
Sunday, March 26, 2023 - If there is one thing that is certain it is that Johnson & Johnson will continue to try and delay the continuation of around 40,000 individual talcum powder lawsuits against them by women with ovarian cancer and men and women with mesothelioma. Law.com tells readers that a possible hearing before the US Supreme Court could further delay the start of the trials and that matters will be complicated as a new MDL (multidistrict litigation) Judge becomes familiarized with the cases. U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson who has handled the cases since 2016 retired in 2022. It is presumed that several talcum powder cancer bellwether cases will be scheduled for 2024 and 2025 that will judge the jury's reaction to the science brought forth by only the expert witnesses that the MDL judge has pre-approved. J & J was denied a rehearing of the reversal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and has only the US Supreme Court to look to for their final challenge. Plaintiff attorneys are eager to restart their cases. "They should file for whatever petition they want, but we're not waiting," said Christopher Placitella, of Cohen, Placitella & Roth in Red Bank, New Jersey, who is liaison counsel in the talc multidistrict litigation. "With all due respect to Judge Kaplan who has stated multiple times on the record that he was waiting to hear from the Third Circuit as to whether he was going to continue the case, the Third Circuit has spoken today: 'No, you can't," Law.com wrote.
The Texas Two Step (TTS) is a legal maneuver that takes advantage of lenient bankruptcy laws in the state of Texas that allow a company to spin off its legal liabilities into a separate shell company and then declare the newly-created subsidiary bankrupt immediately. This takes control of the lawsuits out of the hands of the courts and juries and places them into the hands of a single bankruptcy judge. Johnson & Johnson's attempt at the TTS was initially approved by New Jersey Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan who concluded that the controversial legal maneuver was the best chance for all qualifying plaintiffs to get the most amount of money as quickly as possible. The plan was to offer the group a lump-sum settlement, thought to be far less than the lottery-like multi-million dollar jury awards they were receiving in court. Judge Kaplan asserts that taking each of the 40,000 cases to trial one by one would take decades. A settlement under the TTS, however, would protect J & J from excessive punitive damages for their decades of reprehensible corporate conduct in deliberately failing to warn customers that asbestos lurked in their talc supply according to a Reuters investigation.
Both ovarian cancer and mesothelioma plaintiffs allege that using talcum powder caused their disease. Expert witnesses for women with ovarian cancer have testified that using baby powder made from talc for feminine hygiene can cause particles of talc to enter the vagina and travel up and become permanently lodged in the ovaries causing sufficient oxidative stress over time leading to ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is a death sentence as most cases are not diagnosed until the latest stage when it is difficult to treat. 95% of women with ovarian cancer die within five years of diagnosis according to leading online cancer websites. Johnson & Johnson has already successfully delayed the trials for two years by attempting to implement the Texas Two-Step bankruptcy scheme.
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