February 13, 2026 - Attributable to Erik Haas, Worldwide Vice President of Litigation, Johnson & Johnson:
“This token verdict reflects the jury’s appreciation that the claims were meritless and divorced from the science. While nominal, the award reflects the inequity of the current jury system where, as here, plaintiff’s lawyers and their experts failed to legally or scientifically address the evidence demonstrating the true cause of plaintiff’s cancer was unrelated to the Company’s products. That fundamental failure of proof, among others, will be a central ground for our appeal, which we will immediately pursue. As with the vast majority of other plaintiff verdicts in this talc litigation, we fully expect the appellate court to reverse.
“These lawsuits are predicated on junk science and refuted by decades of studies demonstrating Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.
“Plaintiff lawyers’ predatory and exploitative business model takes advantage of people’s suffering, using junk science to roll the dice in search of jackpot verdicts regardless of the truth or the facts. The reality is most claimants recover nothing in the tort system, while baseless talc lawsuits clog the courts with contrived ‘scientific’ debates that should properly be decided by the expert scientific agencies authorized and directed by Congress to do so.”