Johnson & Johnson has announced a substantial $5.5 billion settlement to address the mountain of lawsuits claiming that their baby powder and talc-based products lead to ovarian cancer. This significant agreement could bring closure to a decade-long legal saga that has cast a lengthy shadow over the company.
This settlement aims to resolve around 76,000 pending claims, including those grouped in federal court in New Jersey and others in various state courts, thus tackling nearly all of the outstanding talc-related allegations against Johnson & Johnson. Previously, the company had addressed most suits claiming that their talc contained asbestos, resulting in mesothelioma.
Law firms representing the plaintiffs have endorsed the settlement, declaring it a fair conclusion to an exhaustive legal battle spanning ten years. For the settlement to be finalized, it must receive approval from 95% of the plaintiffs with ovarian cancer claims in both state and federal courts.
Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s vice president of litigation, expressed confidence in the company’s position, labeling the claims as “meritless.” The decision to settle, he said, was a strategic move to bring resolution.
“Though we are confident in our eventual success through continued litigation, as demonstrated by our favorable outcomes in most cases thus far, this settlement allows us to move forward and concentrate on our central mission of creating life-saving medicines and medical devices,” stated Haas.
J&J expects to pay $3 billion in 2027, and it will make further payments in 2028. But the deal could be worth more, depending on how many people participate in the settlement.
Chris Seeger, an attorney who represents about 2,500 clients with talc claims and helped negotiate the agreement, said J&J could ultimately pay $7 billion or more. The settlement assigns specific values to qualifying ovarian cancer claims but does not cap J&J’s total payout, he said.
“We got a fair settlement, and our clients are going to be happy with it,” Seeger said in an interview.
DEAL COMES AFTER COURTROOM WINS
J&J reached the settlement after a series of wins in court, including victories in individual trials, successful efforts to disqualify plaintiffs’ lawyers from the litigation, and court rulings against experts that plaintiffs had used to prove their cases in court.
J&J won a significant court victory in the long-running legal battle last week, when a federal judge cast doubt on individual plaintiffs’ ability to prove that talc specifically caused their ovarian cancer.
J&J has long denied that its talc products caused cancer, saying that talc was safe and did not contain asbestos. The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.
The litigation resumed in March 2025, after being put on hold for more than three years while J&J unsuccessfully pursued a strategy known as the “Texas two step,” filing three bankruptcies through a shell-company subsidiary in an effort to settle the cases. Each bankruptcy ended in dismissal.
Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with a multibillion verdict in favor of 22 women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.
Unlike the proposed bankruptcy settlements, Monday’s agreement applies only to existing claims and does not address future lawsuits.
The exclusion of future claims made more money available to current plaintiffs than the bankruptcy proposal did, and it also accelerates the payments so that all claims will be paid within 18 months instead of being spread out over more than a decade, Seeger said.