© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder in an illustration photo taken in New York, February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar/Illustration/File Photo
Written by Brendan Pearson
(Reuters) – Attorneys for a California man who said he developed a rare cancer from exposure to asbestos in talc-based baby powder at Johnson & Johnson (NYSE) Inc urged a jury on Monday to order the company to pay massive punitive damages. describing her behavior as negligent and “despicable”.
“No reasonably careful company would sell a product that would allow carcinogens to be applied to children,” Joseph Satterly, attorney for Emory Hernandez Valades, said in closing arguments at the end of a six-week trial in Alameda County Superior Court. California.
J&J has consistently denied that the discontinued baby talcum powder contains asbestos or causes cancer.
Satterley asked jurors to award Hernandez nearly nine times more punitive damages than his so-called compensatory damages, which include $3.8 million for his medical costs plus compensatory pain and suffering. The damages from pain and suffering should be far greater than the medical costs, Satterley said.
The US Supreme Court has found that punitive damages should generally be no more than nine times the damages, and that the higher percentage may be reduced on appeal as excessive.
J & J’s attorneys told the jury Monday that no evidence was presented at trial linking Hernandez’s cancer to talc, and that the company has always done its best to test talc and make sure it’s safe.
“What is notable from a party bearing the burden of proof is that they have not tested any bottle that it claims to have used” for asbestos, said attorney Alison Brown.
When the plaintiff’s doctors searched for asbestos in his body, she said “they found nothing — not a single fiber of asbestos.”
The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Tuesday.
Hernandez, 24, said in his lawsuit that he developed mesothelioma in the tissues surrounding his heart as a result of exposure to J&J’s talc products since he was a child.
Tens of thousands of plaintiffs have sued, alleging that J&J baby powder and other talcum products sometimes contain asbestos and cause ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. J&J said its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos, which has been linked to mesothelioma.
J&J subsidiary LTL Management in April filed for bankruptcy in Trenton, New Jersey, proposing to pay $8.9 billion to settle more than 38,000 lawsuits and prevent new cases from being filed. This was the company’s second attempt to resolve its talc claims in bankruptcy, after a previous attempt was denied by a federal appeals court.
Most litigation was halted during the bankruptcy proceedings, but US Chief Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan, who is overseeing LTL Chapter 11, allowed Hernandez’s trial to proceed because he is only expected to live a short time.
Plaintiffs from Asbestos are seeking to have LTL’s latest bankruptcy application dismissed. They argued that the lawsuit was brought in bad faith to isolate the company from litigation.
J&J and LTL have argued that bankruptcy delivers settlement payments to plaintiffs more fairly, efficiently, and equitably than lower courts, which they likened to a “lottery” in which some litigants receive large prizes while others receive nothing.
J&J said in bankruptcy court filings that costs for talc rulings, settlements and legal fees have come to about $4.5 billion.
