OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: A man, who sued Johnson & Johnson for reportedly giving him cancer through its baby powder, has now won the case against the company. On Tuesday, July 18, a jury issued its judgment and ordered the pharmaceutical giant to pay $18.8M to Emory Hernandez Valadez.
The verdict came a year after the man from California sued the company in 2022. In his filings, the 24-year-old alleged that he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, which Mayo Clinic describes as “a type of cancer that occurs in the thin layer of tissue that covers the majority of your internal organs,” after using its talcum powder since he was a baby. He has also accused Johnson & Johnson of combining asbestos in their products, which was apparently responsible for cancer. Earlier in July, Valadez’s attorney reportedly said, “A reasonably careful corporation would not sell a product that allowed carcinogens to be applied to babies.”
Who is Emory Hernandez Valadez?
Valadez is reportedly one of many who have filed the case against Johnson & Johnson. CNN Business reported that the decision in the case of Valadez was “a setback for the company as it seeks to settle thousands of similar cases over its talc-based products in US bankruptcy court.”
Following the decision by the court, Erik Haas, J&J's vice president of litigation, shared a statement claiming that the firm would appeal the judgment, which he deemed “irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”
‘Johnson & Johnson never learns’
Meanwhile, the recent development has attracted mixed reactions online with a user tweeting, “How can they definitively say it was baby powder? Many products have asbestos in them - old linoleum, old switchboards, cladding, fire insulation, pipe insulation etc.” Another user wrote, “Johnson & Johnson never learns. It boggles the mind how they manage to operate without morals or ethics in such a regulated space.”
“Johnson & Johnson is a fraud,” a third user asserted. A fourth one stated, “Two things. This needs to be fact-checked because there is no circumstance in the world in which big pharma would have a product that has gone through the FDA and their independent rigorous testing process Also the cancer was due to have asbestos as an ingredient.” “Multinational companies always fraud .. there are more products like these .!!” a fifth user added.