The family of Mae Moore, a California resident who died at age 88 in 2021, sued the company the same year, claiming J&J’s talc baby powder products contained asbestos fibers that caused her rare cancer. The jury late on Monday ordered J&J to pay $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, according to court filings.
I had a pleurodesis (that’s where your lung collapses several times so they glue it to your ribcage with scar tissue to keep it upright) and they offered me a choice of talc, where they blow in the talc powder to create the scar tissue, or mechanical, where they stick a spiked rod in and abrade you from the inside out.
Despite how unpleasant the latter sounded, my surgeon all but insisted I not go talc, he said I would thank him later.
Oh, god I do.
Our medical technology these days is miraculous in many ways. Then there are knee replacements and this body horror tale.
It gets worse but the moral is, don’t collapse your lung. I wish someone had told me.
You did this on purpose?
And mostly how not to ! I got a new fear and no way to know how to prevent it !
They already created a separate company to assume the liability related this lawsuit years ago. I believe the bankruptcy court ruled against them on this, but that shows you the length they’re willing to go to not pay out.
I would be shocked if this wasn’t just kicked around for years, until eventually SCOTUS establishes new legal precedent to further help shield large corporations from this type of liability.
So what fraction of a percent of the profits they made is the $966m?
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/JNJ/financials/
2024 they had $89 billion revenue, so about 1.1% of revenue.
But profits were “only” $16.7 Billion so 5.8% of profits.But I’m guessing this is deductible, so they’ll probably survive.
Lets see, between its introduction in 1892 to its discontinuation in 2019 we can safely derive a global sales average of $273 million per year (accounted for inflation).
2019-1892 = 127 years * $273 = $34.67 Billion.
$966m penalty equates to a 3% deficit to its overall worldwide sales over the lifetime of the product. IE: Nothing.
If you kill a board of directors and chief officers is it only one count of murder since a corporation is a person?
I think you mean 3%…but still, nothing.
I had assumed that people would figure that the 0.03 was part of 1.00 and not 100 but yeah, my bad. changed.
No see, we created another billionaire and we’ll call it a win. That family will never need to work again.
