April 29, 2025 – Statement attributable to Erik Haas, Worldwide Vice President of Litigation, Johnson & Johnson
“Today’s filing further affirms that the talc litigation is and always has been premised on junk science. The filing details the newly-discovered evidence that irrefutably establishes the knowingly false predicate of the seminal study that the plaintiffs’ bar has cited for the proposition that talc causes cancer. This evidence was obtained pursuant to court-ordered discovery that ends a four-year effort by the author of the study (Dr. Jacqueline Moline) and her employer (Northwell Health) to block Johnson & Johnson from obtaining the information within their control. The company has now obtained irrefutable evidence that a ‘scientific’ article authored by Dr. Jacqueline Moline, who has a 20+ year history of serving as a paid legal expert exclusively for plaintiff lawyers, is completely fraudulent.
For years, Dr. Moline’s article was central to the plaintiffs’ bar’s efforts to wrongly associate talcum powder with cancer-related lawsuits and to malign Johnson’s Baby Powder. Her mission was to promote a fraudulent article to the American public, the judiciary and even Congress, all in an attempt to fuel baseless litigation and enrich the plaintiffs’ lawyers who hired her. The evidence confirms what we have always asserted: The article is a lie, and the plaintiffs’ bar’s theories are rooted in falsehood and deception.
In her 2020 article, Dr. Moline discussed 33 people diagnosed with mesothelioma, claiming that their talcum powder use was the sole source of their asbestos exposure. However, the evidence available to Dr. Moline at the time—and just obtained by Johnson & Johnson--clearly shows at least half of these individuals had significant, real sources of asbestos exposure, challenging the article’s foundational assertion. For instance, one was known to smoke cigarettes containing asbestos in the 1950s. Another received compensation for asbestos exposure from the recognized Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, created to compensate those affected by its once-prevalent asbestos-containing insulation products. Numerous similar cases exist, and we expect to identify even more as discovery proceeds. In light of this new evidence, Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Pecos River intends to reopen its lawsuit against Dr. Moline.”
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