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 New Jersey-based J&J has been battling a series of lawsuits over its
talc-based products, including Johnson's Baby Powder, brought by
around 5,950 women and their families. The company denies any link
between talc and cancer.
A fifth of the plaintiffs have cases pending in state court in St.
Louis, where juries in four trials have hit J&J and a talc supplier
with $307 million in verdicts. Those four cases and most of the
others on the St. Louis docket involve out-of-state plaintiffs suing
an out-of-state company.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in a case involving
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co that state courts cannot hear claims against
companies that are not based in the state when the alleged injuries
did not occur there.
The ruling immediately led a St. Louis judge at J&J's urging to
declare a mistrial in the latest talc case, in which two of the
three women at issue were from out of state. It also could imperil
prior verdicts and cases that have yet to go to trial.
"We believe the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the
Bristol-Myers Squibb matter requires reversal of the talc cases that
are currently under appeal in St. Louis," J&J said in a statement.
The question of where such lawsuits can be filed has been the
subject of fierce debate.
The business community has argued plaintiffs should not be allowed
to shop around for the most favorable court to bring lawsuits, while
injured parties claim corporations are trying to deny them access to
justice.
Along with talc cases, large-scale litigation alleging injuries from
Bayer AG's Essure birth control device in Missouri and California
and GlaxoSmithKline's antidepressant Paxil in California and
Illinois are examples of other cases where defendants could utilize
the Supreme Court decision.
Although he declared a mistrial on Monday, St. Louis Circuit Judge
Rex Burlison left the door open for the plaintiffs to argue they
still have jurisdiction.
Plaintiffs lawyer Ted Meadows said he would argue the St. Louis
court still had jurisdiction based on a Missouri-based bottler J&J
used to package its talc products, which he said would create a
sufficient connection to the state.
"It's very disappointing to mistry a case because the Supreme Court
changed the rules on us," said Meadows.
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The lawsuit decided by the high court on Monday involved claims
against Bristol-Myers and California-based drug distributor McKesson
Corp by 86 California residents and 575 non-Californians over the
blood thinner Plavix.
Beyond Monday's mistrial, the Supreme Court's ruling could bolster a
pending appeal by J&J of a $72 million verdict in favor of the
family of Alabama resident Jacqueline Fox, who died in 2015. A
Missouri appeals court had said in May it would wait until the
Supreme Court issued its decision to decide the appeal.
J&J has won only one of the five trials so far in Missouri. It
previously sought to move talc cases out of St. Louis, but the
Missouri Supreme Court in January denied its bid.
The company has also cast the St. Louis court as overly
plaintiff-friendly and has allowed evidence linking talc to cancer
that was rejected by a New Jersey state court judge overseeing over
200 talc cases. The plaintiffs are appealing.
The talc verdicts against J&J led the business-friendly American
Tort Reform Association last year to declare the St. Louis state
court the nation's top "Judicial Hellhole."
Now J&J could try to use the Supreme Court ruling to dismiss many of
the cases it faces in Missouri, according to legal experts.
Corporations facing a large volume of cases in venues chosen by
plaintiffs will likely cite the Supreme Court to try to dismiss
those claims, said Rusty Perdew, a defense lawyer at the law firm
Locke Lord.
"You have a bunch of defendants who can go back and say, 'Judge, you
got that wrong and you're going to have to dismiss claims by all
those plaintiffs,'" he said.
(This story was corrected to show that Perdew was speaking about
corporations in general, not J&J, in next-to-last paragraph.)
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Tom Brown and Bill
Trott)
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