Johnson & Johnson Agrees to Pay $5.5 Billion to Settle Talc Lawsuits -- 2nd Update

By Xavier Martinez and Elias Schisgall

Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $5.5 billion to resolve remaining lawsuits that alleged the company's talc products caused ovarian cancer, with the goal of putting an end to litigation that has been going on for more than a decade.

The company said Monday that it had reached this agreement with firms representing plaintiffs in the outstanding talc cases. The agreement is conditioned on 95% of remaining claimants participating, the drugmaker said.

This isn't the first time Johnson & Johnson has made such an offer. In 2024, the company offered more than $8 billion to plaintiffs as part of a bankruptcy attempt that could have ended the ovarian-cancer talc litigation but in the end, a judge didn't approve it. The drugmaker has been fighting cases since then.

Last week, a federal judge ordered plaintiffs to explain why their claims shouldn't be thrown out, after two of their expert witnesses couldn't say that talc specifically caused any individual woman's cancer as opposed to some other cause. Johnson & Johnson is now using that ruling as leverage for the $5.5 billion commitment.

The plaintiffs' claims "lack scientific merit and were sustained only by unreliable expert opinions that could not survive rigorous judicial review," Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson's global vice president of litigation, said in a statement.

A judge also disqualified Beasley Allen, the Alabama law firm that voted against Johnson & Johnson's 2024 bankruptcy plan, from representing roughly 5,500 women in the federal cases. The judge found the firm had improperly worked with a former Johnson & Johnson lawyer who had inside knowledge of the company's settlement thinking. Beasley Allen has denied wrongdoing.

A negotiating committee for the plaintiffs attorneys in the new settlement said they agreed to the deals after years of litigation.

"This resolution could not have been achieved without the courage and determination of these women and their families who demanded accountability for the conduct of J&J," said plaintiffs' co-lead counsel, Michelle Parfitt of Ashcraft & Gerel LLP.

Johnson & Johnson said it would pay up to $3 billion in claim payments in 2027 under the agreement, with no further payments due before 2028. It committed $5.5 billion to claim payments.

The resolution will become final if the lead plaintiff firms in the ovarian-cancer talc litigation agree to participate, and if 95% of those who filed claims agree to the settlement -- a process which could take months to determine.

Johnson & Johnson has spent more than a decade fighting claims that its talc-based baby powder caused ovarian cancer. The company had been facing nearly 80,000 claims that this deal would resolve.

The drugmaker tried three times to force a settlement through bankruptcy, funneling the claims into a subsidiary and putting that subsidiary into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Judges rejected all three attempts, most recently in April 2025. The court ruled that Johnson & Johnson, a financially healthy company, didn't belong in bankruptcy court and forced the case back into ordinary litigation.

Shares of Johnson & Johnson rose 1.8% in after-hours trading.

Write to Xavier Martinez at xavier.martinez@wsj.com and Elias Schisgall at elias.schisgall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 27, 2026 20:56 ET (00:56 GMT)