Jury Awards Deborah Schultz $22 Million In Johnson & Johnson Talc Trial

Deborah Schultz used Johnson's Baby Powder after bathing for decades before she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2018. Her treatment involved major surgery and rounds of chemotherapy. She and her husband, Albert Schultz, sued Johnson & Johnson in Los Angeles County Superior Court, arguing the company knew its talc could be contaminated with asbestos and sold it anyway without a warning.

The case was part of California's coordinated talc litigation, JCCP 4872, and was the first of six bellwether cases Judge Theresa Traber set for trial in pairs. It was tried alongside a second case brought by Monica Kent, who made similar claims after her own ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2014. Opening statements were heard in mid-November 2025 and the trial ran about four weeks. Aside from one 2017 trial, it was only the second time a California jury had heard claims that talc caused ovarian cancer, and the first anywhere in the country to reach a plaintiffs' verdict on those claims since 2021, after federal courts rejected Johnson & Johnson's repeated attempts to route the talc claims into a subsidiary's bankruptcy.

At trial, J&J's defense argued there was no reliable science tying talc to ovarian cancer and that no major U.S. health authority had drawn that link. Kirkland & Ellis partner Allison Brown told jurors the only people who had told Kent and Schultz their cancers were caused by talc were their own lawyers. The plaintiffs' side countered that the company's internal records showed it knew from the 1960s that its talc could carry asbestos and chose not to disclose it.

On December 12, 2025, the jury sided with both plaintiffs, finding Johnson & Johnson liable for negligence, failure to warn and concealment of the asbestos risk. It awarded Kent $18 million and awarded the Schultzes $22 million: $13.5 million in compensatory damages to Deborah and $8.5 million for loss of consortium to Albert. The jury declined to award either plaintiff punitive damages.

Dan Robinson of Robinson Calcagnie tried the case with Andy Birchfield of Beasley Allen. After the verdict, Robinson told reporters that Johnson & Johnson's only answer to decades of customer loyalty was silence about the risk in its own product: 'The only thing they did was be loyal to Johnson & Johnson as a customer for only 50 years. That loyalty was a one-way street.'

Johnson & Johnson said it would appeal. Erik Haas, the company's worldwide vice president of litigation, said the company had won 16 of the 17 ovarian cancer cases it had previously tried and expected to prevail again. No appellate ruling has been reported, and there is no public record that any part of the award has been paid.