Pittsburgh Jury Tries to Award $22M Against J&J in Talc Case Despite Handing Up Defense Verdict

A Pittsburgh talc trial that spanned a month and a half ended Monday in a defense win for Johnson & Johnson. But the jury that issued the verdict might not know that.

In filling out the verdict sheet, the Allegheny County jury awarded $22 million in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson. Only, the jury had also found in the company’s favor on causation and was not supposed to answer questions on punitive damages.

The finding was a first for Jessica Dean, a partner at Dallas-based Dean Omar Branham Shirley, who represented the plaintiff. Dean said she had never before seen a situation where a jury awards damages on an issue it was not meant to consider. Given the unfamiliar territory, Dean said the plaintiffs are still considering how to deal with it.

Meanwhile, Erik Haas, worldwide vice president of litigation at Johnson & Johnson, celebrated the verdict. “Yet another jury has refused to issue a verdict that adopts the baseless claims of the mass tort plaintiffs’ bar,” he said in a statement. “As we have steadfastly maintained,” Haas continued, “this litigation is driven by paid-for science fomented and financed by plaintiffs’ firms—which in this instance was squarely refuted by the irrefutable evidence that plaintiff’s disease was caused by exposures other than the company’s talc products.”

The lawsuit, captioned Felton v. Johnson & Johnson, asserted that decedent Michaeleen Lee developed mesothelioma from decades of exposure to allegedly asbestos-containing cosmetic talcum powder products made by Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson, represented at trial by Miami-based King & Spalding partner Will Stute, denied liability.

Dean described the trial as “a miserable process,” contending that the defense sought to draw out the proceedings. She claimed the court limited the time the plaintiffs could spend questioning certain witnesses while placing no such restraints on Johnson & Johnson.

“There was a horrible undercurrent of time pressure,” she said, as well as “a jury that was so upset about timing.”

According to Dean, three jurors dropped out during the trial, which began in mid-November and continued into early January, with a break in December for the winter holidays. Dean said the jury only took two hours to deliberate before it returned the defense verdict.

But while Johnson & Johnson won the case, it did not win over the jury entirely.

The jury determined that Johnson & Johnson was negligent and that the company intentionally misrepresented the safety of its talc products but that those factors did not cause Lee’s cancer. The jury then went on to make a determination on punitive damages, despite the verdict sheet’s instructions that it should only do so if it found against the defendants on causation.

Dean contended that the judge, Philip Ignelzi of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, did not ask any clarifying questions about the verdict.

Dean said the plaintiffs team was unable to speak with jurors after the trial, but that the jury seemed to believe they had actually awarded damages against Johnson & Johnson.

“It was a little bit heartbreaking,” she recalled.

Dean said there are a few issues the plaintiffs are considering for a post-trial challenge, including the court’s allowance of scientific testimony from a defense witness that the plaintiffs claim had never designated as an expert.

The loss follows a string of recent talc trial successes for Dean’s firm. Dean Omar won four mesothelioma verdicts last year of $15 million Connecticut’s Bridgeport Judicial District Court, $45 million in Chicago’s Cook County Circuit Court, $260 million in Oregon’s Multnomah County Circuit Court and $63.4 million in South Carolina’s Richland County Court of Common Pleas, all against J&J. A fourth trial in Dallas County District Court was settled before jurors got the case, and another trial in Massachusetts ended in a mistrial.

Johnson & Johnson’s Haas claimed in his statement that, “The junk science advanced by the plaintiffs’ bar has resulted in widespread misinformation, fostered unfounded fear, and distracted attention and resources from the critical work needed to better understand genetics and the other causes of spontaneous cancer, and the development of interventions to improve survival rates.”