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Myron Levin is editor of FairWarning.
In the early 1970s, a Johnson & Johnson official posed a question that haunts the company today. If Johnson's Baby Powder contained asbestos at a level of, say, 1 percent, how much of the cancer-causing substance would a baby inhale when dusted with the powder?
A California jury today rejected claims that Johnson & Johnson and its talc supplier were responsible for the deadly cancer of a woman who blamed her illness on breathing asbestos fibers from contaminated body powders.
Overriding a huge jury verdict against Johnson & Johnson, a Los Angeles judge has ordered a new trial in the case of an ovarian cancer victim who claimed she contracted the disease through longtime use of the company’s talc powders for feminine hygiene.
How many people are killed or seriously injured because of drivers fiddling with their cellphones? Due to widespread underreporting, no one really knows. In 2015, according to estimates of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 3,477 deaths caused by distracted driving, including 476 involving the use of cellphones. Depending [...]
Countermeasures to prevent drivers from fiddling with their phones have proven ineffective. Safety advocates want wireless companies to implement technology that automatically block electronic distractions, but the industry is reluctant to take this approach.
It was the first California trial in the mushrooming legal battle over links between genital use of talc and ovarian cancer, and the award against J&J was by far the largest so far.
Breaking a string of lopsided courtroom defeats, Johnson & Johnson scored a legal victory Friday when a St. Louis jury rejected the claim of an ovarian cancer victim that her use of talc powders for feminine hygiene caused the disease.
Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, in October at an Oakland, Calif., church forum about the impact of banning menthol cigarettes. (Photo by Rachel Loyd/Oakland North) Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, the top seller of the menthol cigarettes favored by most black smokers, is seizing on the hot button [...]
Exponent, Inc. isn't a household name, but it is a go-to destination for major industries with liability problems.
Health care products giant Johnson & Johnson suffered another big legal defeat late Thursday, when a St. Louis jury ordered the company and its talc supplier to pay about $70 million in damages to a woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on the use of talc powders for feminine hygiene. [...]
Johnson & Johnson faces more than 1,200 liability claims from ovarian cancer victims contending that they contracted the disease from feminine hygiene use of the company's talc powders--Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower. Johnson & Johnson suffered a second straight legal defeat in defense of its signature [...]
Kayla Davidson and her son, Maxx, who was four-years-old when he died in a rear-end collision in Memphis in April, 2014. Freakish as it may have seemed, the accident that killed 13-month-old Weston Kingsley was hardly unforeseeable. On the day he died in February 2014, he was buckled [...]
Jacqueline Fox Johnson & Johnson has suffered a major courtroom defeat in the first in a wave of lawsuits claiming that talc products marketed by the company for feminine hygiene use caused ovarian cancer. A jury in St. Louis late Monday night ordered the health care products giant [...]
Recent research is focusing new attention on erionite, an asbestos-like mineral, blamed for staggering rates of a deadly cancer in Turkey, that also is found in the rocks and soil of 13 Western states.
Kool, introduced in the 1930s by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co., was one of the early menthol brands, and until the 1950s the most popular. This 1937 ad was one of many that promoted Kool as soothing to the throat. (Cigarette ads courtesy of the Stanford University collection) [...]
