New $1.3B lawsuit accuses Johnson & Johnson of hiding baby powder cancer risk

More than 3,000 people in Britain have sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming its baby powder caused cancer, according to court filings.

The case, filed in Britain’s High Court, seeks more than 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in damages and marks the first group claim against the company in the United Kingdom, according to KP Law, the firm representing the individuals.

The lawsuit mirrors multiple legal battles in the United States where Johnson & Johnson faces tens of thousands of similar claims.

In the British case, the claimants allege that from 1965 to 2023, Johnson & Johnson sold talc-based products that it knew contained cancer-causing fibers such as asbestos. Ovarian cancer and mesothelioma are among cancers that have been linked to asbestos.

“We will be relentless in holding them to account on behalf of all those who have suffered due to their actions,” Tom Longstaff, a partner at KP Law, told The New York Times.

Just last week, a Los Angeles jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who died from a rare cancer.

Earlier this year, a U.S. court rejected Johnson & Johnson’s plan to use a bankruptcy settlement worth $9 billion to resolve roughly 70,000 lawsuits tied to talc products.

Johnson & Johnson stopped selling its talc-based baby powder in the U.S. and Canada in 2020. In 2023, it switched to a cornstarch formula.

The company maintains its baby powder is safe. Its consumer products, including baby powder, are now part of Kenvue, a separate company that spun off from Johnson & Johnson in 2023.

“We sympathize deeply with people living with cancer,” Kenvue said in a statement, but added that years of independent testing by labs and regulators have confirmed the product’s safety.

The company said the talc used in baby powder “was compliant with any required regulatory standards, did not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”

Those in the U.K. case said they were exposed to baby powder for at least five years, starting in infancy and continuing into adulthood. The product was marketed as “mildness clinically proven,” the lawsuit states.

For decades, internal company documents have shown that Johnson & Johnson scientists expressed concerns that talc could be contaminated with trace amounts of asbestos, a known carcinogen that sometimes occurs naturally underground near talc.

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