Plaintiffs' attorneys to fight J&J bankruptcy plan to shield 200K suits

Outraged plaintiffs' attorneys vowed Friday to fight Johnson & Johnson's $2 billion bankruptcy plan that would shield it tens of thousands of current lawsuits and all future litigation involving talcum powder asbestos claims.

Johnson & Johnson announced Thursday, that its newly established company, LTL Management LLC, created "to hold and manage claims" in the nationwide talc litigation, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

J&J has agreed to fund LTL in amounts to be determined by a North Carolina bankruptcy judge and will establish a $2 billion trust to settle current and future claims including thousands consolidated into a federal multidistrict litigation in New Jersey and a Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding in California.

However, a chorus of plaintiffs' attorneys on Friday said the $2 billion amount is "outrageously" low and vowed to fight the plan in bankruptcy court for as long as it takes to stop it.

Oakland attorney Joseph D. Satterley of Kazan, McClain, Satterley & Greenwood APLC, who has tried six mesothelioma jury trials to verdict, said he will file an objection this week, opposing any stay on current judgments and payments that would be triggered by the bankruptcy proceedings.

"If a bankruptcy court allows a stay to be issued, it will delay people's cases for months or years," Satterley said. "They're trying to stay these people's cases so you cannot even preserve their testimony before they die? People are incurring medical expenses and lost wages and enduring pain and suffering and this is J&J's way to basically cheat their way out of the system."

As of this month, Johnson & Johnson's market cap is over $400 billion, Satterley pointed out. J&J "is not bankrupt," he said he will argue.

In a statement Thursday, Johnson & Johnson said the parent company and other affiliates did not file for bankruptcy protection and would continue to operate as usual. J&J said its bankruptcy plan involving LTL is not a concession of liability, and that more than 40 years of medical studies by experts around the world "continue to support the safety of cosmetic talc."

"We are taking these actions to bring certainty to all parties involved in the cosmetic talc cases," Executive Vice President General Counsel Michael Ullmann said. "While we continue to stand firmly behind the safety of our cosmetic talc products, we believe resolving this matter as quickly and efficiently as possible is in the best interests of the company and all stakeholders."

New York attorney Danny Kraft of Weitz & Luxenberg PC, who won a $27.4 million jury verdict in Los Angeles last week for his client who alleged talcum powder caused his mesothelioma, said a legislature needs to step in to stop companies like Johnson & Johnson and Purdue Pharma from using the bankruptcy system to escape liability. A New York bankruptcy court last month approved a plan that would allow Purdue's founders to be shielded from all opioid-related lawsuits in exchange for $4.5 billion.

"What Johnson and Johnson is trying to do cannot be legal," Kraft said. "When rational citizens and more rational legislators and rational members of our court system look at it, there's no way they will deem what J&J is trying to do to be right. My firm is going to fight as long as it takes, no matter how long it takes for the people that we represent, to make sure that Johnson and Johnson pays them every cent they have coming to them."

New York plaintiffs' attorney Brian A. Goldstein, who along with Satterley and Kraft, was named in the bankruptcy filings Thursday as having the most significant representation of talc claimants, said, "We will be opposing J&J's attempt to continue delaying compensation to the mothers, wives, and daughters whose trust in Johnson & Johnson's reputation and claims of purity were misguided."

Despite J&J winning a fair amount of cases since thousands of mesothelioma patients began filing suits in 2016, juries have returned billions of dollars in plaintiff verdicts, and lawsuits continue to pour in. Many of the settlements have been with individual plaintiffs for undisclosed amounts. Litigants claim J&J's talcum powder products caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.