Johnson & Johnson has agreed to a provisional settlement worth an estimated $5.5 billion to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc based products, including its baby powder, caused ovarian cancer. The agreement could bring an end to litigation that has continued for roughly a decade.
The deal covers about 76,000 claims consolidated in federal court in New Jersey along with related state court cases, representing nearly all of the outstanding talc related lawsuits against the company. It follows an earlier round of settlements involving claims that the talc contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma.
For the settlement to take effect, ninety five percent of ovarian cancer claimants must accept its terms. J&J’s vice president of litigation, Erik Haas, maintained that the underlying claims were without merit but said the company chose to settle in order to achieve closure and move forward. The company expects to pay around $3 billion in 2027, with additional payments following in 2028, though the final total could rise depending on participation.
An attorney representing roughly 2,500 claimants and involved in negotiating the deal, Chris Seeger, estimated the total payout could ultimately reach $7 billion or more, noting that the agreement assigns values to qualifying claims without capping the company’s overall liability.
The settlement follows a string of courtroom wins for J&J, including individual trial victories, the disqualification of certain plaintiffs’ lawyers, and rulings against expert witnesses used to support the claims. Litigation had been paused for several years while the company pursued a bankruptcy strategy through a shell subsidiary, an approach that was dismissed multiple times before proceedings resumed in March 2025.
Unlike the earlier bankruptcy proposals, this settlement covers only existing claims, not future ones, but accelerates payment so that all claims will be resolved within eighteen months rather than being drawn out over many years.
In a separate development, Britain’s Financial Reporting Council has fined the accounting firm EY approximately 1.2 million pounds, along with a further fine of about 49,000 pounds against audit partner Julie Carlyle, over failures connected to the firm’s audit of the online furniture retailer Made.com. Regulators found that auditors relied too heavily on the company’s own financial forecasts without sufficiently challenging them, ahead of Made’s collapse into administration in 2022. The retailer was later acquired by Next.
