In the fight over baby powder ovarian cancer, all lawsuits in the New Jersey state court system have been transferred to a single court for coordinated proceedings.

At least 65 different baby powder cancer lawsuits have been consolidated into a single multi-county litigation, or MCL, in Atlantic County.

New Jersey is expected to host hundreds and perhaps thousands more such claims as plaintiffs seek to litigate in the home state of defendant Johnson & Johnson. The New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the creation of the MCL earlier in 2015 to coordinate discovery and pretrial procedures.

Generally, plaintiffs in the MCL are women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using talcum powder products like Johnson’s Baby Powder or Shower to Shower, both made by defendant Johnson & Johnson.

The baby powder cancer lawsuits allege a causal connection between the talc in those products and the ovarian cancer they developed, and they accuse Johnson & Johnson of failing to properly warn them about the risk of baby powder ovarian cancer.

The Baby Powder Cancer MCL is In re: Talc-Based Powder Products, Case No. 300, is in the New Jersey Superior Court for Atlantic County.

A case management meeting was scheduled for Jan. 16, 2016 to review the status of discovery.

Baby Powder Ovarian Cancer

While the scientific evidence varies, several decades’ worth of studies suggest a link between talc and baby powder ovarian cancer.

One British study from 1971 examined tissue from 13 ovarian tumors and found talc particles embedded in 10 of them. Then in 1982, an epidemiological study showing a link between genital talc use and ovarian cancer was published in the journal Cancer. The authors of that study also noted support for the link in the similarity between talc and asbestos, a known carcinogen.

In a more recent study published in the International Journal of Cancer in 1999, the authors estimated that use of talcum powder in the genital area could be the cause of as many as 10 percent of the instances of ovarian cancer in the U.S.

The authors concluded that the association between talcum powder and ovarian cancer is significant enough to warrant more formal public health warnings.

Baby Powder Lawsuits

In addition to the New Jersey MCL, litigation over baby powder ovarian cancer is going on elsewhere in the country. The first of these cases to go to trial ended with a jury’s finding that J&J had been negligent in failing to warn about the possible link between talc and ovarian cancer. The same jury did not find that talcum powder had caused the plaintiff’s ovarian cancer and awarded her no damages.

Despite that mixed result, one estimate says that at least 700 other baby powder cancer lawsuits have been filed.

In St. Louis, over 50 different plaintiffs from all over the country have joined in a single baby powder cancer lawsuit. The plaintiffs are suing not only Johnson & Johnson but also Imerys Talc America, a mining company that supplies J&J with raw talc. Trial in that case is scheduled to begin in February 2016.