Internal Johnson & Johnson documents contained information that helped seal a $117 million verdict for a couple’s talcum powder asbestos contamination lawsuit.

Plaintiff Stephen L. and his wife alleged Stephen became ill with mesothelioma because of his exposure to asbestos through Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder and other talc-based products. The couple filed their talcum powder asbestos contamination lawsuit in 2016.

In April 2018, a jury found that Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based powders contained asbestos and determined that because Stephen was exposed to the asbestos-laced products from 1972 to 2003, the powders were linked to his development of mesothelioma.

Both Johnson & Johnson and its miner of talc, Imerys Talc America Inc., asked the judge to set aside the verdicts. But the judge refused to do so on June 29. The $117 million verdict consists of $37 million in compensatory damages and $80 million in punitive damages.

Talc and asbestos are both naturally occurring minerals and are almost always found in close proximity to one another in the earth.

J&J’s Own Words Helped Talcum Powder Asbestos Contamination Lawsuit

Over the course of the litigation, Johnson & Johnson submitted more than one million pages of documents, plus additional documents from Imerys.

Buried deep in the documents was a memo written by a physician employed by Johnson & Johnson back in 1969. The memo allegedly addressed potential health issues with asbestos-tainted talc and said: “this could result in litigation.”

A 1974 document from Imerys Talc to Johnson & Johnson discussed concerns that there were problems separating the asbestos from the talc and that the carcinogen was “a severe health hazard.” That year, Stephen was a year and a half old.

Despite allegedly spending years making attempts to remove all the asbestos from the talc, Johnson & Johnson allegedly created a new testing standard that would allow asbestos to remain in the talc, but undetected.

The talcum powder asbestos contamination lawsuit alleges the new test was rigged to allow negative results when asbestos really still existed in the talc. The new test allegedly involved taking a sample of talc, and if five fibers of any single kind of asbestos were found during a two-hour period, that talc would be determined to be asbestos-laced. If five fibers of the identical type of asbestos were not found within the two-hour time limit, the lab technician would allegedly render the talc to be asbestos-free.

According to Stephen’s lawyers, this test allegedly enabled tons of asbestos to exist in talc-based products that were reported to the FDA as asbestos-free. Johnson & Johnson allegedly told the FDA in 1976 that no asbestos was found in their talc, but internal documents allegedly prove otherwise.

In another remarkable showing of evidence in the talcum powder asbestos contamination lawsuit, Stephen’s lawyers showed that his lymph nodes housed asbestos fibers that allegedly were a match to the asbestos fibers determined to exist in Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder.

The Talcum Powder Asbestos Contamination Lawsuit is Case No. L-7385-16, in the Superior Court of the State of New Jersey, County of Middlesex.