A group of talcum powder lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson have begun in New Jersey state court and could grow to include thousands of similar claims.

As of December 2015, 65 baby powder lawsuit over alleged talcum powder cancer had been consolidated into one multi-county litigation, or MCL, in the Superior Court for Atlantic County.

Each individual talcum powder lawsuit consolidated in New Jersey, the plaintiffs will be litigating in the home state of defendant Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of talcum powders like Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower.

An MCL is a procedure in which several individual claims are consolidated in a single court at the state level so that one judge can oversee discovery and other pretrial procedures.

Courts sometimes use an MCL to promote more efficient handling of large numbers of similar claims, such as these talcum powder lawsuits.

The number of claims in this talcum powder lawsuit MCL is expected to increase to potentially hundreds or thousands by the time the MCL is over. Lawyers and judges involved in these cases are scheduled to meet for a status conference in January of this year.

The outcomes of the first few of these talcum powder lawsuits to go to trial will not be binding on other cases. However, they will be useful as guides for settlement negotiations, as they will give all the parties an idea of how the issues and evidence will play out in front of a jury.

What Are Talcum Powder Dangers?

Generally, the plaintiffs in a talcum powder lawsuit such as these allege that defendants like J&J failed to properly warn consumers about an alleged risk of developing talcum powder cancer. Many of these plaintiffs are women who developed ovarian cancer that they now say was caused by their use of talcum powder near their genital area.

Over forty years’ worth of scientific research has yielded results suggesting a possible relationship between talc and ovarian cancer. In one of the earliest studies, British researchers found talc particles imbedded in ten out of thirteen ovarian tumors examined. A later study from 1982 was the first to find a statistically significant link between genital talc use and ovarian cancer.

Then in 1999, a study published in the May issue of the International Journal of Cancer concluded that genital use of talcum powder could be the cause of as many as 2,000 cases of ovarian cancer per year in the U.S. The authors of that study called for more adequate consumer warnings about talcum powder dangers.

Armed with scientific findings like these, plaintiff Deane B. brought the first claim over talcum powder cancer in a South Dakota federal court. Results of that trial were mixed: the jury found that Deane had failed to prove that her talcum powder use caused her cancer, but it did find that the defendant, a J&J subsidiary, had been negligent in failing to warn consumers about talcum powder dangers.

Since Deane’s trial, other plaintiffs have been emboldened by the jury’s finding of negligence. Dozens of talcum powder lawsuits have been filed, mostly in New Jersey and also in St. Louis, Mo., which is considered a plaintiff-friendly venue.