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J&J is not pursuing a settlement outside of bankruptcy

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J&J wants to discredit lawyers pursuing "meritless" talc

cases

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Plaintiffs' lawyers say J&J is rehashing failed attacks

By Dietrich Knauth

April 2 (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson ( JNJ ) has signaled that

it will attempt to disqualify certain plaintiffs' lawyers and

use other aggressive litigation tactics as it resumes defending

tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that its baby powder and

other talc products caused ovarian cancer after three failed

attempts to resolve the cases in a bankruptcy settlement.

The company said in a Tuesday investor call that it has no

interest in settling the current lawsuits outside of bankruptcy,

because a non-bankruptcy settlement would keep it vulnerable to

future talc lawsuits. J&J said it will now attempt to combat the

"meritless" claims by discrediting plaintiffs' lawyers and their

scientific experts on whose testimony they rely.

J&J quickly followed that announcement with a court filing

later Tuesday, laying out some of its renewed challenges to

plaintiffs' lawyers in a New Jersey federal court proceeding

where more than 58,000 lawsuits alleging that its baby powder

and other talc products contained asbestos and caused ovarian

cancer have been centralized.

J&J says that its products are safe, do not contain asbestos

and do not cause cancer. It stopped selling talc-based baby

powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.

The company asked the judge overseeing the multidistrict

litigation to put several matters back on the schedule,

including J&J's renewed effort to disqualify Beasley Allen, a

law firm that has led negotiations for the plaintiffs. J&J also

said it wants to probe the plaintiffs' lawyers sources of

litigation funding.

Beasley Allen's Andy Birchfield said Wednesday that J&J had

already tried and failed to disqualify his firm.

"J&J is trying to focus on everything except the fact that

their baby powder contained asbestos," Birchfield said. "They

don't want any focus on that, so they are going to attack me,

and they are going to attack Beasley Allen in an effort to

distract from their bad conduct."

Other plaintiffs' lawyers echoed that criticism.

Majed Nachawati, an attorney who represents about 5,000

plaintiffs with ovarian cancer claims and who supported J&J's

latest bankruptcy settlement offer, said that J&J should stop

attempting to "deflect" attention onto plaintiffs' lawyers and

instead take accountability after the "complete and utter

failure" of its legal strategy.

J&J declined to comment on specific criticisms by

plaintiffs' lawyers on Wednesday.

The litigation has roared back to life after a U.S.

bankruptcy judge in Houston on Monday rejected J&J's attempt to

resolve the lawsuits with a $10 billion settlement, a setback

that follows two previous failures of its bankruptcy strategy in

other courts. The controversial strategy, dubbed by critics as a

Texas two-step, shifted J&J's talc liabilities into a newly

created entity that filed for bankruptcy and stopped lawsuits

from proceeding against J&J.

J&J's worldwide vice president of litigation, Erik Haas,

said during Tuesday's call that plaintiffs' lawyers were "sorely

mistaken" if they thought J&J would simply take the money set

aside for a bankruptcy deal and push it toward a revised

settlement.

Attorneys representing cancer victims had been deeply

divided over J&J's pursuit of a bankruptcy settlement. Some

supported the deal as the best way to get compensation for their

clients, while others argued J&J was gaming the legal system to

suppress settlement values and gain bankruptcy protections meant

for people and companies that cannot afford to pay their debts.

J&J has won most of the trials in ovarian cancer cases and

it successfully appealed some of its initial losses, with a $2

billion verdict standing as an outlier loss for the company. But

its record will be tested in coming months as more individual

cases are allowed to go to trial after years of delays caused by

J&J's repeated bankruptcy filings since 2021.

J&J has said that the lawsuits are based on "fake science."

The judge is conducting a fresh review of the scientific

evidence that can be used in the litigation, giving J&J a new

opportunity to contest the evidence linking talc to ovarian

cancer.

The company has also said it will renew efforts to directly

sue researchers who have testified as plaintiffs' experts.

Judges dismissed two lawsuits in 2024 that the company filed

against scientists whose research and testimony was used to

support plaintiffs' claims at trial.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York)