$117 Million Lanzo Verdict, the First Jury Win Tying J&J Talc to Mesothelioma, Later Reversed on Appeal

Stephen Lanzo III grew up in New Jersey using Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower, and he kept using the products for roughly three decades. In 2016 he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure. He and his wife Kendra sued Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. and its longtime talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, in Middlesex County, the same county where J&J is headquartered. The claim was that the talc itself carried asbestos, and that the companies had known it for years.

The trial ran for more than two months in early 2018. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case and delivered the closing argument, telling jurors the companies' conduct warranted a clear answer. On April 11, 2018, the jury awarded $37 million in compensatory damages: $30 million to Mr. Lanzo and $7 million to his wife for loss of consortium, with fault split 70 percent to J&J and 30 percent to Imerys. The next day it added $80 million in punitive damages, $55 million against J&J and $25 million against Imerys, bringing the total to $117 million. It was the first time any jury had held Johnson & Johnson liable for a mesothelioma case linked to its talc products. J&J, which maintained its talc was asbestos free, said it would appeal.

The verdict did not survive that appeal, and the reversal is central to this case's history. On April 28, 2021, the New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the judgment in a published opinion (Docket No. A-5711-17). The panel held that the trial court had failed its gatekeeping role by admitting testimony from two of the plaintiffs' experts, Dr. Jacqueline Moline and Dr. James Webber, that non-asbestiform mineral fragments can cause mesothelioma. The court found that theory was not generally accepted in the scientific community and was not supported by publications experts in the field reasonably rely on. The panel also held that an adverse inference instruction over Imerys's discovery violations, while proper as to Imerys, had prejudiced J&J. It ordered new, separate trials against each defendant.

A retrial never came together in any publicly reported form. Imerys Talc America had already filed for Chapter 11 in 2019. In October 2021, months after the reversal, J&J placed its talc liabilities into a new subsidiary, LTL Management, which filed its own Chapter 11 petition and froze talc litigation nationwide. The Third Circuit dismissed that bankruptcy in January 2023, a second filing was dismissed later that year, and a third attempt through the Red River Talc entity was dismissed in 2025. Through all of it, no retrial verdict, settlement, or final judgment in the Lanzo case has been publicly reported.

The case still stands as the first plaintiff verdict connecting J&J talc to mesothelioma, a category of claims that grew into the thousands afterward. The 2021 reversal opinion remains published at 467 N.J. Super. 476.