J&J’s third talc bankruptcy settlement attempt denied

A US bankruptcy court has denied Johnson & Johnson (J&J)’s third attempt to use a subsidiary’s bankruptcy to settle litigation over talc and cancer. The company now says it will abandon its bankruptcy settlement plan and return to the courts to fight the tens of thousands of lawsuits in North America claiming its talc products caused ovarian and other gynaecological cancers.

The 31 March decision in Texas dismissed the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection case of J&J subsidiary Red River Talc, which J&J established specifically to assume liability for its talc products litigation. Red River promptly filed for bankruptcy in Texas in September 2024. At the time, the company stated that approximately 83% of current claimants supported its $8 billion (£6 billion) bankruptcy settlement plan.

The new ruling comes after J&J twice tried a similar bankruptcy approach through an almost identical subsidiary, LTL Management, but was overruled by a federal court. Red River currently holds the liability for over 90,000 personal injury lawsuits, Judge Christopher Lopez explained in his order. These lawsuits require millions of dollars per year to defend, he said.

‘Even if some cases are consolidated, one can do the math and see that claimants may die before ever having juries decide their cases,’ Lopez’s decision reads. His order expressed concerns about how plaintiff votes in favour of J&J’s bankruptcy plan were collected and also noted that the supreme court decision last year that rejected Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy plan to resolve civil lawsuits arising from the opioid epidemic prevents J&J from obtaining the protection from future litigation that the company described as essential to the bankruptcy plan.

J&J no longer intends to settle these claims and reversed the $7 billion reserve it had put in place for the bankruptcy plan. Rather than ‘pursue a protracted appeal,’ the company said it will return to the courts to ‘litigate and defeat these meritless talc claims.’ Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said the company is ‘more confident than ever’ given that it has prevailed in 16 of 17 ovarian cases tried in the last 11 years.

However, Andy Birchfield, head of mass torts at Beasley Allen, the law firm representing some of the plaintiffs suing J&J, calls the decision a victory for the claimaints. ‘This decision affirms what we have argued all along – J&J’s bankruptcy strategy was nothing more than a bad-faith manoeuvre to avoid full accountability,’ said Birchfield. ‘With this ruling, we are now moving forward without delay to trial, where our clients will finally have the chance to present their cases before a jury and obtain the justice they deserve.’