Johnson & Johnson Wins Reversal Of First St. Louis Talc-Cancer Verdict

(RTTNews) - Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) won its appeal of a $72 million verdict claiming its talc products cause ovarian cancer, as a Missouri appeals court found the case shouldn't have been tried in a St. Louis city court.

The verdict to the family of Jacqueline Fox, an Alabama woman who died in 2015, was the first of a series of jury awards in the St. Louis court. The juries there have awarded more than $300 million in verdicts over the talc claims.

The appeals court decision endangers the other Missouri verdicts against J&J as well as hundreds of talc actions filed in the St. Louis court against the company.

The appeals court followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June limiting out-of-state plaintiffs from combining actions in a lower court.

Johnson & Johnson is facing more than 5,500 talc claims in state and federal courts in the U.S., including more than 1,000 in St. Louis. The $72 million award to Fox in February 2016 was followed by verdicts in separate cases in St. Louis for $55 million and $70 million last year and $110 million in May. The company won a defense verdict in a fifth St. Louis talc trial in March. A California jury returned a $417 million jury verdict in the first California trial over the claims in August.