The Missouri Supreme Court passed an order on Monday, January 14, which temporarily paused an upcoming talcum powder trial involving claims filed by 13 women or their spouses, who alleged that Johnson & Johnson's asbestos-contaminated talc caused their ovarian cancer.
The order sustained a petition for a permanent writ of prohibition filed by J&J to stop the trial, which was slated to begin in St. Louis on Tuesday, January 15, and the jury selection for the same was about to begin this week. This was the second ovarian cancer case against J&J comprising of multiple plaintiffs. An earlier multi-plaintiff talc case concluded with a jury award of $4.7 billion granted to 22 women suffering from ovarian cancer. Attorney Beth Bauer wrote in the petition that consolidating too many plaintiffs into a single trial might confuse and mislead the jury in reaching towards an appropriate decision resulting in massive verdict amounts.
More than 1,000 lawsuits are pending against the talc manufacturer, which are centralized for pretrial proceedings in the District of New Jersey, presided over by Hon. Freda L. Wolfson, U.S.D.J./ Hon. Lois H. Goodman, U.S.M.J. as a part of multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2738; In Re: Johnson & Johnson Talcum Powder Products Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation).
