The trial in Los Angeles Superior Court is the second bellwether case in California state courts to tie Johnson & Johnson's baby powder to ovarian cancer.
June 04, 2026 at 07:19 PM
By Amanda Bronstad
Credit: Flickr
What You Need to Know
- The trial features the families of three women who died of ovarian cancer after decades of using Johnson & Johnson's baby powder.
- Although none of the lawyers representing the women mentioned a specific figure when asking for punitive damages, they noted that Johnson & Johnson's net worth was more than $81 billion.
- Johnson & Johnson's lawyers questioned plaintiffs' theories on how talc migrated through a woman's body to reach ovarian cancer and questioned the credibility of the plaintiffs' experts.
A Los Angeles Superior Court jury began deliberations today in a closely watched talcum powder trial against Johnson & Johnson.
The trial features the families of three women who died of ovarian cancer after decades of using Johnson & Johnson's baby powder. Although none of the lawyers representing the women mentioned a specific figure when asking for punitive damages, they noted that Johnson & Johnson's net worth was more than $81 billion.
"What's the amount that would make them change their behavior in the future?" Dan Robinson, of Robinson Calcagnie in Newport Beach, California, asked jurors on Thursday in his closing argument, which was live-streamed by Courtroom View Network. Robinson represents John Owens, the son of Mary Owens, who died in 2021.
"This is a company that hears and listens to one language, and that's dollars and cents," he said.
Wisner Baum partner Ari Friedman, who represents the family of Bonnie Tienken, who died in 2018, said the case was about "one of the biggest corporate cover-ups in this country's history."
"The language they speak is money," he said of Johnson & Johnson. "This number has to be enough for each of these families to speak Johnson & Johnson's language."
Leigh O'Dell, who represents Harold Williams, the husband of one of the women, Geneva Williams, who died in 2011 at age 62, called Johnson & Johnson's conduct "outrageous" and "despicable."
"When there was an opportunity to do the right thing, or tell the truth, or change the product, Johnson & Johnson did not do that," O'Dell, a Beasley Allen principal in Montgomery, Alabama, told jurors, according to the Courtroom View Network livestream.
Instead, she said, Johnson & Johnson knew that asbestos, a known carcinogen, was in talc but failed to do the appropriate testing or warn consumers of the health dangers. Johnson & Johnson "materially misled the FDA" and, to its customers, engaged in "misleading and deceptive marketing" about its talc products, particularly targeting minority women, she told jurors.
"That's careless disregard. That's reckless," she told jurors. "Did they ever warn? No. they never warned ever."
On Thursday, Johnson & Johnson attorney Julia Romano, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles, said there is no evidence of punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson, which was following the science.
"There's absolutely no evidence that J&J intended to cause any harm," she told jurors, according to the Courtroom View Network livestream. "There's no evidence that Johnson & Johnson was misleading the FDA or misleading the public. There's no evidence that Johnson & Johnson was hiding asbestos in baby powder."
The trial, which began about a month ago, is the second bellwether in the California state court cases alleging Johnson & Johnson's baby powder caused ovarian cancer. The families of three women who died of ovarian cancer had their cases combined into a single trial, which follows the first bellwether case that ended on Dec. 12 with a $40 million verdict.
The first trial, handled by Robinson and Beasley Allen's Andy Birchfield in Montgomery, Alabama, was on behalf of two women, for whom the jury awarded only compensatory damages. The jurors did not award punitive damages.
'You Didn't Hear From Treating Doctors'
In the second trial, Johnson & Johnson's lawyers questioned plaintiffs' theories on how talc migrated through a woman's body to reach ovarian cancer. And Romano told jurors that, in each of the plaintiff's cases, the latency period of ovarian cancer didn't match up with the allegations. For instance, Owens began using Johnson & Johnson's baby powder in 1957 but had a procedure called tubal ligation in 1975 that cut off any potential path to the ovaries. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2015, she said, even though the disease has a latency period of 15 to 20 years.
In a separate closing argument, Johnson & Johnson attorney Shaila Diwan, a New York partner at Kirkland & Ellis, questioned the scientific literature supporting the plaintiffs' claims, emphasizing that federal agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, haven't found cosmetic talc causes ovarian cancer. She said doctors don't know what causes ovarian cancer.
She also challenged the credibility of the experts for the plaintiffs.
"You didn't see from plaintiffs' attorneys any medical record identifying a cause," she told jurors, according to the Courtroom View Network livestream. "And you didn't hear from treating doctors. What you heard instead were from doctors they hired to talk about this in litigation."
"None of the medical doctors they brought you told anyone that talc caused their ovarian cancer until they got into this litigation," she added.
Plaintiffs' lawyers spent much of their closings going over the burden of proof in the case: whether Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder was "a substantial factor" in, and "more likely than not" to have caused, each woman's cancer.
"Our burden is not to prove the cause," O'Dell told jurors, according to Courtroom View Network's livestream. "It's to prove a cause, a contributing cause."
And they displayed numerous photos of each woman and her family members, who are suing for noneconomic damages such as companionship, affection and moral support. They described the years of hospitalizations and chemotherapy all three women endured before their deaths.
"Ms. Williams, over 18 months before she died sadly from her cancer, suffered greatly, suffered greatly, as a result of using a cosmetic product that had no medical benefit," O'Dell said.
Owens went through "extensive" pain and suffering, Robinson told jurors. Friedman said noneconomic damages should be a "substantial" number.
"Compensation is what is required," he said. "Compensation is what balances those scales. If they've taken a lot from somebody, they have to give a lot."
Both trials are in Los Angeles Superior Court, where hundreds of similar cases have been coordinated before Judge Theresa Traber as part of California's Judicial Council Coordinated Proceedings against Johnson & Johnson.
