Bart Williams led the Proskauer team which secured a key victory for Johnson & Johnson in widely publicized product liability trial relating to the company’s talc-based Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products and its alleged link to ovarian cancer.
In a Missouri trial, plaintiffs claimed that J&J failed to warn consumers that its talc-based products can cause or contribute to ovarian cancer, and that the individual plaintiffs in the cases contracted ovarian cancer as a result of their multi-year use of those products. After a month long trial, the jury returned a complete defense verdict on all claims and awarded zero damages.
Bart and his team were retained just two months prior to the March 2017 trial.
Bart successfully argued that multiple federal and cancer watchdog agencies have reviewed the same scientific evidence upon which the plaintiffs relied, and concluded that talc should not be listed as a cancer causer or contributor.
Watch Bart’s closing argument below where he referenced the famous Dred Scott case, which had also been tried in St. Louis back in 1857. At the end of Bart’s closing, he compared J&J’s position to that of the former slave Dred Scott, urging jurors to be inspired to clear J&J of liability just like Dred Scott jurors did in freeing him from slavery.