$37.3 Million Talc Verdict for Four Mesothelioma Patients Plus $750 Million Punitive

Douglas Barden, David Etheridge, D'Angela McNeill-George and William Ronning did not know one another. What they shared was a diagnosis of mesothelioma, an asbestos cancer, and a history: each had been dusted as a child with Johnson's Baby Powder or Shower to Shower, and each blamed asbestos in the talc. Their separate suits against Johnson & Johnson and its consumer subsidiary were pending in Middlesex County, the company's home county, when Judge Ana Viscomi consolidated the four for a single trial on February 1, 2019. Barden was 65, Etheridge 57, McNeill-George 41 and Ronning 46. Barden, Etheridge and Ronning died while the case was pending and their estates and widows carried on.

The liability and compensatory phase ran about 33 trial days beginning June 29, 2019. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg, Christopher Placitella of Cohen Placitella & Roth and Chris Panatier of Simon Greenstone Panatier tried the case for the plaintiffs. Their experts included the mineralogist William Longo, who extrapolated each plaintiff's lifetime exposure from the number of applications, and Dr. Jacqueline Moline and Dr. James Webber, who testified about the health effects of asbestos and of the non-asbestiform cleavage fragments found in talc. Johnson & Johnson argued there was no appreciable asbestos in its products and that none of the four had tied their peritoneal mesotheliomas to asbestos. At the close, Judge Viscomi struck the entire summation of the company's lead lawyer, Diane Sullivan of Weil Gotshal, for calling plaintiffs' counsel sinister in violation of an earlier order, and denied a mistrial.

On September 11, 2019 the jury found the company liable and awarded $37.3 million: $7.25 million to Douglas Barden's estate and his wife Roslyn, $9.45 million to David Etheridge's estate and his wife Darlene, $14.7 million to D'Angela McNeill-George, and $5.9 million to William Ronning's estate and his wife Elizabeth. A new jury was empaneled for punitive damages. After about sixteen trial days, including live testimony from the company's chief executive Alex Gorsky, it returned $750 million in punitive damages in February 2020. Judge Viscomi immediately reduced that to $186.5 million, the five-times-compensatory ceiling of the New Jersey Punitive Damages Act: $36.25 million for Barden, $47.25 million for Etheridge, $73.5 million for McNeill-George and $29.5 million for Ronning. Final judgments totaling $37.3 million compensatory and $186.5 million punitive, plus prejudgment interest, were entered on July 24, 2020.

On October 3, 2023, the Appellate Division reversed all of it. In a per curiam opinion (Nos. A-0047-20 through A-0050-20), the panel held that the trial court had failed to perform its gatekeeping role under the New Jersey Supreme Court's Accutane decision, admitting Webber's and Moline's testimony that cleavage fragments can cause mesothelioma and Longo's exposure extrapolation without the hearing and reliability findings the rule requires. Citing its own 2021 reversal of Levy Konigsberg's $117 million Lanzo verdict, the court found the errors harmful and remanded all four cases for new trials. It did not reach the company's other arguments, including the struck closing and the consolidation.

No retrial has been publicly reported. Johnson & Johnson's successive attempts to move its talc liability into bankruptcy, beginning with LTL Management in October 2021, stalled the docket for years. The verdict remains the largest talc award in New Jersey history and, in its reversal, one of the clearest statements of how New Jersey courts now police expert testimony in talc cases.