By Diana Novak Jones
Jan 20(Reuters) – In a victory for thousands of women suing Johnson & Johnson over claims that the company’s baby powder and other talc products caused their ovarian cancer, a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that they will be allowed to present testimony at trial from experts who support that link.
The ruling from an outside judge serving as a special master in the long-running litigation, which includes more than 67,500 lawsuits that have been consolidated in federal court in New Jersey, will allow the cases to move towards the first trial in federal court potentially later this year.
Product liability lawsuits, like the ones J&J is facing over its talc products, rely on experts to establish that the product is capable of causing the alleged harm. Decisions on expert testimony can sometimes be a major turning point in these cases.
U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp in Trenton, New Jersey, who is overseeing the litigation, brought in retired U.S. District Judge Freda Wolfson to evaluate what expert testimony would be allowed at trial, based on whether it meets the scientific standards set out in federal law.
J&J, which has been fighting claims over its talc products in both federal and state court for years, has said its products are safe and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020 and switched to a cornstarch product.
It is the second time Wolfson has reviewed the scientific evidence in the case, as she oversaw the so-called multidistrict litigation from its creation in 2016 to her retirement in 2023, when the case was reassigned to Shipp. In 2020, she sided with the plaintiffs, saying that their experts would be allowed to testify that the products’ link to cancer could be caused by the talc’s contamination with asbestos and heavy metals. J&J has said its products do not contain asbestos.
In 2024, Shipp said he wanted the scientific evidence reevaluated because of two factors: recent changes to federal rules governing expert testimony, which strengthen the courts’ role in vetting experts’ methodology and conclusions before allowing them to testify – and the emergence of new scientific evidence.
J&J had sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a tactic that was rejected three times by federal courts, most recently in April 2025. The bankruptcies had put most of the talc product cases on hold for years.
J&J also sued scientists whose research and testimony was used to support plaintiffs’ cases as part of its strategy to fight the claims, accusing them of falsifying their results by including people who were likely exposed to asbestos through other means. One of those lawsuits is still pending, while the other has been dismissed.
Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in state courts where some of the cases had already gone to trial, with verdicts as high as $4.69 billion awarded to 22 women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company has had the verdict in that case and some others reduced on appeal and won some trials outright.
Separately, J&J has also faced cases alleging its talc products caused a rare and deadly cancer called mesothelioma. The company has settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, so many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months. In the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, including one for more than $1.5 billion in Baltimore in December.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Thomas Derpinghaus)
