Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $417 million in lawsuit over talc cancer risks

A Los Angeles jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $417 million to a hospitalized woman who claimed in a lawsuit that the talc in the company's iconic baby powder causes ovarian cancer when applied regularly for feminine hygiene.

The lawsuit was brought by a California woman, Eva Echeverria, who alleged Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn consumers about the potential cancer risks of talcum powder.

Echeverria developed ovarian cancer as a "proximate result of the unreasonably dangerous and defective nature of talcum powder," Echeverria said in her lawsuit. A surgeon removed a softball-sized tumor, but she is now near death and was unable to attend the trial, one of her attorneys said.

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.” The verdict marks the largest sum awarded in a series of talcum powder lawsuit verdicts against Johnson & Johnson in courts around the U.S.

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.