It didn’t take long for a city of St. Louis jury to reach a verdict in a multi-plaintiff trial last week involving Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder.
Shortly after closing arguments, the jury decided that the use of baby powder did not cause the three plaintiffs’ ovarian cancer, according to media reports.
“We said all along that the science doesn't support the notion or the view that talc causes cancer,” said Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA). “That's what the scientific experts and the evidence indicates.”
As previously reported, plaintiffs argued that J&J was aware that particles of the baby powder could travel up fallopian tubes and cause cancer, while J&J vehemently defended the safety of its talc products.
“The cancer that each plaintiff developed was different based on the reports that I had seen, or that we reviewed, and to say those cases belong together is just wrong,” Joyce told the St. Louis Record. “The nature of lawsuits are supposed to involve specific matters, not just things where it’s sort of related. That's not enough.”
The St. Louis jury isn’t the only one that has sided with J&J in recent weeks. Pennsylvania Record reported a defense verdict last week following a five week trial in Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.
“The specific technical-scientific question about causation in some of these cases can be very complex,” Joyce said in an interview.
In July, jurors in Illinois also sided with J&J against Elizabeth Driscoll's family members. Driscoll died of ovarian cancer five years ago. As previously reported in the Madison Record, the plaintiff relatives, who sued in 2018, were seeking $50 million in damages.
"It's part of a trend of defense verdicts that we're seeing," Joyce said. "St Clair County, Philadelphia, and St. Louis are all judicial hellholes."
Formerly number one on ATRA’s annual Judicial Hellhole ranking, St. Louis dropped to number seven last year due to a few legislative changes. However, last week’s jury verdict could improve the city’s score.
“We’ll certainly take it into consideration,” Joyce added. “We try to look at all that we think is problematic but also all that is positive. Our focus is on making sure that the process works, that the substantive law is sound, and that the procedures and process by which a case is filed, and where it can be filed, venue questions, and jurisdictional questions go into determining results.”