On Monday, the Federal Banking Judge Johnson & Johnson refused to agree to a $ 9 billion settlement with tens of thousands of people who are suing the company due to allegations that talcum powder products that caused cancer.
The proposal would have determined almost all current and future allegations that the company’s TALC products contain asbestos and caused cancer. Like the previous two efforts – in 2021 and 2023 – the deal tried to use a bankruptcy system to settle claims.
Johnson & Johnson claims that its products do not contain asbestos and that there was no connection to its products and cancer, as the judge, Christopher Lopez, wrote in his rule. Johnson & Johnson has long denied these claims, but in recent years it has stopped selling children’s powder based on talc all over the world.
More than 90,000 claims against Johnson & Johnson and other parties are suspended, many courts that are dealt with individually.
The judge said that the attempt to settle by the company and the lawyers to the plaintiffs who submitted the claims is opposed by the Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, as well as the lawyers of the other prosecutors.
In a statement on Monday, Johnson & Johnson said, “The court unfortunately allowed a couple of firmly motivated law companies, who admitted that they had not benefited from ten cents for their customers in a decade of litigation, to defeat the overwhelming desire for the demands.”
The company said: “Instead of following a long appeal, you will return to the system of damage to litigation and defeat the invasive talc demands.” He added that it would reflect about $ 7 billion that had been allocated to bankruptcy.
Johnson & Johnson, which makes drugs and consumer products including ambulance and left departments, spent years saying that the child’s powder was safe. The internal notes showed that inside the company, there were fears that the talc could be contaminated with asbestos, a well -known carcinogen.
Since 2021, critics have claimed that Johnson & Johnson has been trying to make unfair benefit from the protection granted to companies in the bankruptcy court. That year, a subsidiary was established, LTL management, and has reduced child powder claims. After a day, LTL announced bankruptcy.
Johnson & Johnson announced at the time that the bankruptcy file, in New Jersey, was aimed at resolving lawsuits “in a fair way to all parties.” She said that the company will provide money for any amounts that the bankruptcy court decided that LTL owed.
Prosecutors’ lawyers mocked the creation of LTL and its immediate bankruptcy as an example of “The Texas Two-Step”-an attempt to protect a solvent company with a sweet company. In January 2023, a federal judge refused to submit LTL bankruptcy.
Three months later, the company announced that it had reached a deal to pay 8.9 billion dollars over the course of 25 years for tens of thousands of claims, an attempt to end the litigation that lasted at that time for more than a decade. The lawyers of the prosecutors in the case described the settlement as “a great victory for tens of thousands of women who suffer from gynecological cancer caused by the Ten -based J. & J.”
The American Court of Appeal rejected the third district twice the settlement. Johnson & Johnson tried again, this time in Texas, and Judge Lopez now refused that as well. He decided that the lawyers of the prosecutors did not grant enough approval from the demands. He also found “violations of seam, including the time of short voting in an unreasonable way for thousands of creditors.”
While the court’s decision is not easy, ”he said:“ It is the right decision. ”