A Los Angeles judge has wiped out a jaw dropping $950 million in punitive damages that a jury slapped on Johnson & Johnson in a talc-related mesothelioma case, but left roughly $16 million in compensatory damages on the books. The move, issued Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, shifts the action from the courtroom drama back to a grind of post-trial motions and appeals in one of the country’s highest-profile talc trials.
Judge Sets Aside Punitive Award
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ruth Ann Kwan granted Johnson & Johnson’s request to throw out the punitive portion of the October 6, 2025, verdict, finding that the record did not back up the jury’s billion-dollar punishment and pointing to hundreds of test results showing the company’s talc products did not contain asbestos, according to Reuters. The judge left the compensatory awards intact and laid out her reasoning in a post-trial order.
What The Jury Found
Back in October, jurors concluded that Mae Moore, who died in 2021 at age 88, developed mesothelioma after years of using Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower. They awarded about $16 million in compensatory damages plus $950 million in punitive damages, according to the trial minute order. The minute order from the Los Angeles Superior Court, in case number 21STCV05513, records the jury’s yes-or-no findings on exposure, negligence, and causation, and lists the damages assigned to Moore and her family, as reflected in the Asbestos Case Tracker.
Company And Family React
Johnson & Johnson had blasted the punitive award as “devoid of evidentiary support and patently unconstitutional,” and litigation chief Erik Haas said the company will appeal both the remaining compensatory award and the court’s rulings on causation, Reuters reports. Plaintiffs’ lawyers, including lead counsel Jessica Dean and Venus Burns, said they disagreed with the judge’s decision, and attorney Trey Branham said he expects an appeal.
Broader Litigation And What Comes Next
The Moore case is just one front in a sprawling mass-tort battle. More than 67,000 talc-related claims remain pending against Johnson & Johnson in courts around the country, according to recent court filings cited by Al Jazeera. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based Baby Powder in the United States in 2020, and its consumer unit later announced a global shift to a cornstarch-based formula, a transition described in the Kenvue prospectus filed with the SEC.
Legal Implications
Kwan’s decision to vacate the punitive award does not touch the jury’s liability findings, but it does erase what would have been a blockbuster punitive payout and all but guarantees another round of appeals. The ruling shows how eye-popping jury verdicts in the talc litigation can be reshaped by judges during post-trial review and sets up higher-court fights over what evidence is enough to justify punitive damages in these kinds of mass-tort cases.
