The Talc tragedy: Inside the Johnson & Johnson lawsuit saga
ovarian cancer, leaving behind two daughters. Her grieving mother, Darlene, blames Johnson & Johnson's Baby Powder — and she's pursuing a lawsuit her daughter started a decade ago, alleging the company's talc caused the deadly illness.
The 71-year-old Houston-area grandmother has drained her savings caring for the girls, she said. Now she and tens of thousands of other claimants face a July 26 deadline to vote on J&J's third attempt at a controversial bankruptcy maneuver that would cap its liability and set up a fund to pay victims.
«I don't know how much longer I can carry on,» Evans told Reuters. «I feel pressure that I should probably vote 'yes.'»
After being rebuffed twice by federal courts, the $350 billion healthcare giant is attempting again to end the litigation in a so-called «Texas two-step» bankruptcy. The maneuver involves offloading its talc liability onto a newly created subsidiary, which then declares Chapter 11. The goal is to use the proceeding to force all plaintiffs into one settlement — without requiring J&J itself to file bankruptcy.
But the company needs the votes of 75% of claimants before the subsidiary can ask a bankruptcy judge to impose the deal on all of them. J&J faces lawsuits from more than 61,000 plaintiffs but the figure swells as high as 100,000 when counting claimants who haven't sued, according to Erik Haas, J&J's global vice president of litigation. The company maintains its talc products are safe and do not cause cancer.
Some plaintiffs' lawyers, including Evans', are
