LOS ANGELES _ A Los Angeles jury issued a $417 million verdict Monday against Johnson & Johnson, finding the company liable for failing to warn a 63-year-old woman diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer about the risks of using its talcum products.
The verdict marks the largest award yet in a number of suits claiming that the company's talc powder causes ovarian cancer. More than 300 lawsuits are pending in California and more than 4,500 claims in the rest of the country, alleging that the health care giant ignored studies linking its Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products to cancer.
The plaintiff, Eva Echeverria, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007. A surgeon removed a softball-sized tumor, but Echeverria is now near death and was unable to attend the trial, one of her attorneys said.
In a video-recorded deposition played for the jury, she testified she used the Johnson's Baby Powder from age 11 until 2016, when she saw a news story about a woman with ovarian cancer who had also used the product. The talc is one of the company's best-known products, marketed at one point with the jingle, "A sprinkle a day helps keep the odor away."
Echeverria testified that if Johnson & Johnson, which earned a profit of $16.5 billion last year, had put a warning on the product, she would have stopped using it.
After two days of deliberating, jurors awarded Echeverria $70 million in compensatory damages and $347 million in punitive damages. The jury panel found there was a connection between her ovarian cancer and the baby powder.
"We are grateful for the jury's verdict on this matter and that Eva Echeverria was able to have her day in court," said Mark Robinson, one of her attorneys, who accused Johnson & Johnson of "covering up the truth for so many years."
Johnson & Johnson immediately announced it would seek to overturn the verdict.
"We will appeal today's verdict because we are guided by the science, which supports the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder," the company said in a statement.
During the trial, the company's lawyers argued that various scientific studies as well as federal agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, had not found that talc products are carcinogenic.
