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johnson and johnson Announced on Tuesday that the company agreed to pay $8.9 billion over 25 years to resolve “all current and future claims” that the company’s baby powder and other cosmetic talc products allegedly caused cancer.
The company announced in the securities filing that its subsidiary LTL Management, Inc. will refile for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy to resolve the allegations. The filing is not an admission of wrongdoing and the company stands by its position that talcum powder products are safe, according to the statement.
Johnson & Johnson and its other affiliates have not filed for bankruptcy and will continue to operate business as usual, the statement added.
“The company continues to believe that these claims are misleading and lack scientific merit,” Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s vice president of litigation, said in part in a statement. “However, as the Bankruptcy Court recognized, resolving these cases in the tort system would take decades and would impose significant costs on (the company) and the system, and most claimants would never receive any compensation.”
The announcement comes months after a federal appeals court ruled in January that the company could not use bankruptcy court to settle some 38,000 lawsuits alleging that the talc in its products caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, ABC News reported. reported. At the time, the company said it planned to challenge the ruling.
Critics had urged the court to reject the legal move, fearing it could prompt other big companies to avoid bringing mass tort suits before juries.
In 2019, Johnson & Johnson recalled a shipment of baby powder when a sample tested positive for a small amount of asbestos, according to an advisory from the US Food and Drug Administration. Sales of the talc-based product ended up in north america Next year.
The company Announced last year that it would stop using talc in its baby powder worldwide by 2023 and that the ingredient would be replaced by cornstarch.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Max Zahn contributed to this report.
