Jacqueline Fox passed away last fall, but her voice recently came alive inside a St. Louis courtroom.
In an audio deposition, the Birmingham, Ala., native who died at 62 recounted 35 years of using Johnson & Johnson products containing talcum powder, from the pharmaceutical giant’s trademark baby powder to its shower-to-shower body powder. Fox had applied them toward feminine hygiene, but she believed they were what ultimately killed her.
More than three years ago, she was identified as having an ovarian cancer that proved fatal. Fox then joined a lot more than 1,200 women from across the nation suing Johnson & Johnson for neglecting to warn consumers from the dangers related to talc, the mineral utilized in baby powder.
Monday, her case had become the first by which monetary compensation was awarded.
A Missouri jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay for Fox’s family US$72 million in actual and punitive damages. Certainly one of Fox’s lead attorneys, Jim Onder, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that US$31 million will go towards the Missouri Crime Victim Compensation Fund.
The suit’s other defendant, talc producer Imerys Talc America, is not faulted.
“We’ve no higher responsibility than the health and safety of consumers and we’re disappointed using the outcome of the trial,” Johnson & Johnson said in a statement Tuesday. “We sympathize with the plaintiff’s family but firmly believe the security of cosmetic talc is supported by decades of scientific evidence.”
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Johnson & Johnson is expected to appeal the verdict. The award – which is made up of US$10 million in compensatory damages and US$62 million in punitive damages – will likely be lessened in appellate courts, Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom told the Associated Press.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, one male juror and nine female jurors voted in Fox’s favour; two men voted against her.
One juror, 50-year-old Jerome Kendrick, told the Post-Dispatch he was swayed by internal company memos presented at trial.
“They attempted to cover up and influence the boards that regulate cosmetics,” he said, adding “They might have a minimum of place a warning label around the box however they didn’t. They didn’t do anything.”
One memo from the company medical consultant likened ignoring the potential risks related to “hygenic” talc use and ovarian cancer to denying the link between cigarette smoking and cancer – in other words, “denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary,” the Associated Press reported.
They might have a minimum of place a warning label on the box however they didn’t. They did nothing
Another document noted that sales were declining as more people became aware of the risks, and included strategies for making blacks and Hispanics the greatest users of talcum powder, Onder said, as the Post-Dispatch reported.
Fox was Black.
The New Jersey-based company faces a lot more lawsuits related to talcum products it’s made household names.
Marvin Salter, Fox’s son, told the AP that using Johnson & Johnson “became second nature, like brushing the teeth.”
But a routine act eventually became insidious, Fox’s lawyers argued.
A pathologist found that Fox’s ovaries were inflamed from talc, which then converted into cancer.
While research has associated regular talc use with ovarian cancer for many years, the American Cancer Society notes that there is no definitive research on whether asbestos-free talc – the kind popular in consumer products – causes ovarian cancer:
“Findings have been mixed, with a few studies reporting a slightly increased risk plus some reporting no increase. Many case-control studies have found a little rise in risk. However these types of studies can be biased because they often rely on a person’s memory of talc use many years earlier.”
