The Supreme Court of Missouri declined to hear Johnson & Johnson's petition for review of an a more than $2 billion damage award to some 22 women who allege asbestos in talc powder afflicted them with ovarian cancer.
“This is overtly wrong on its face,” said Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA). “The court is diminished by its failure to take up this case.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, lawyers for Johnson & Johnson argued that many of the plaintiffs were from out of state and their cases did not belong in Missouri.
Trial was held in June and July 2018 and in the end, the St. Louis City Circuit Court awarded a total of $550 million in compensation to the women, six of whom died before the trial began. In those cases, awards were given to the spouses or closest relatives of the deceased plaintiffs.
In addition, punitive damages separate from the plaintiff compensation totaling $4.1 billion was levied to punish the company, found by the jury to be liable for negligence - which was later cut in half.
“We thought that the legal issues were overwhelming and that the highest court of the state would take it up,” Joyce told the St. Louis Record. “We made it clear in our brief with the personal jurisdiction issue and all these out of state plaintiffs with little or no nexus to Missouri that this is a case that should be addressed.”
The American Tort Reform Association is among the organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of Johnson & Johnson along with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce.
“Another issue is just the aggregation of all these claims,” Joyce said in an interview. “It sounds great on the surface to want to resolve this in an economic way. If you're a judge, that's a desirable outcome but when you have 22 cases, they're all different. The plaintiffs, the circumstances and the evidence is different. This is not to be confused, at least from our perspective, with something like the tragedy of an airplane crash where the facts and circumstances are all identical. Yes, it involves allegations involving the same product but each person and each set of circumstances is different.”
Johnson & Johnson plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to media reports.
“Rather than just passing it along to the U.S. Supreme Court, which does not hear a lot of cases, this is where I think justice should have been done at the state supreme court level,” Joyce said. “This is a failure from our perspective on the part of the Supreme Court of Missouri.”
ATRA and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce also took issue with the size of the award.
“These issues regarding the question of excessiveness are profoundly important to amici’s members in Missouri and elsewhere,” stated their amicus brief. “Given the recurring nature of these issues and the conflict between this Court’s opinion and authority from federal and state courts around the country applying the same due process limitations, this matter should be transferred to the Supreme Court of Missouri for further review.”
Johnson & Johnson's petition was filed with the Supreme Court of Missouri after a state appellate court upheld a jury’s decision that Johnson & Johnson is liable.