The Settlements

1894

Four things, kept apart

This story follows what juries, courts, regulators and the companies themselves said about harm from skin, eye and beauty products, starting with a baby powder first sold in 1894. It keeps apart what a study showed, what a jury found, what an appeals court changed, and what a company settled. A settlement is not a finding of guilt, and nothing here is medical advice.

1894The year Johnson's Baby Powder was first sold, as a federal appeals court tells it

Jul 2018

St. Louis, July 2018

Twenty-two plaintiffs, women who developed ovarian cancer or their families, sued J&J and its consumer unit over Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower. After six weeks of testimony the jury found the companies liable on all claims. It awarded $550 million in damages and $4.14 billion in punitive damages, about $4.69 billion in all. It was a single trial; later scenes show how it compares with the rest.

$4.69 billionJury award to 22 plaintiffs, 2018: $550 million in damages and $4.14 billion in punitive damages

Dec 2018

The documents

At the trial the women’s lawyers put in old company memos. The appeals court later set out their evidence as the plaintiffs’ case: according to it, the companies knew the powder held asbestos and called it internally their “company trust-mark,” “golden egg” and “sacred cow.” In December 2018 Reuters reported that court documents and test results showed J&J knew for decades that its talc sometimes held asbestos and did not tell regulators or the public. J&J called the report false and inflammatory.

23 Jun 2020

The appeal

On 23 June 2020 the Missouri Court of Appeals cut the award, because it found Missouri could not hear some out-of-state women’s claims. It set punitive damages at $900 million against the consumer unit and about $716 million against J&J and upheld the rest: about $2.1 billion by its figures, $2.24 billion as a later court counted. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear J&J’s appeal on 1 June 2021. Ingham was not typical: according to LTL’s expert, quoted by the Third Circuit, of 15 completed ovarian cancer trials only Ingham ended in an award that was not reversed.

2021

What the studies and agencies say, and J&J’s answer

Health Canada confirmed in 2021 a 2018 finding of a significant association between talc exposure and ovarian cancer. The FDA says studies “have not conclusively demonstrated” a link between genital use of talc powders and ovarian cancer. J&J says its talc is safe and asbestos-free. In 2019 an FDA test found trace asbestos in one bottle and J&J recalled that lot; J&J said 155 tests found none and that the FDA lab’s method deviated from standard practice. J&J stopped selling talc baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, Reuters reports, and says Kenvue now owns the brand.

12 Oct 2021

The Texas two-step

On 12 October 2021, with over 38,000 ovarian cancer suits pending, J&J’s consumer unit used a Texas merger law to split in two. One new company, LTL Management, took the talc claims; the other kept the products. Two days later LTL filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. J&J’s stated goal, the court wrote, was to isolate the talc liabilities so only that company went into bankruptcy; some call it a “Texas two-step,” a label the court said is used pejoratively.

30 Jan 2023

The first no

On 30 January 2023 the Third Circuit threw the bankruptcy out. LTL could draw on a right worth about $61.5 billion against J&J and the unit that kept the products, the court wrote, so it was not in financial distress. “Good intentions,” it added, “do not suffice alone.” The court also recounted that before bankruptcy J&J and its unit had settled about 6,800 talc claims for just under $1 billion.

31 Mar 2025

Second and third tries

J&J tried again. On 28 July 2023 a bankruptcy judge in Trenton dismissed LTL’s second case for lack of “imminent” financial distress. In September 2024 a new subsidiary, Red River Talc, filed a $9 billion plan; at the end of March 2025 a judge in Houston rejected it, finding votes had been improperly solicited. J&J said the plan had the support of the overwhelming majority of claimants, that it would not appeal, and that it had settled 95% of its mesothelioma suits and closed all state consumer claims.

27 Jul 2026

July 2026

On 27 July J&J said it would pay an estimated $5.5 billion for about 76,000 ovarian cancer claims, about $3 billion of it in 2027; it still calls the claims meritless. The plaintiffs’ lead firm puts the minimum at $5.8 billion for about 70,000 plaintiffs, with no cap. Days earlier a magistrate judge in Trenton had doubted whether any plaintiff could prove specific causation and ordered answers by 19 November. As of 1 November 2026 we found no report that the 95% threshold had been met.

95%Share of ovarian cancer claimants who must accept J&J's July 2026 proposal before it becomes final

12 Aug 2024

A real bankruptcy, a different question

Revlon’s plan, confirmed on 3 April 2023, followed a full restructuring, and the question was whether it discharged later claims. On 12 August 2024 a New York bankruptcy judge ruled it bars 42 people’s lawsuits over talc, noting that almost all say they were diagnosed after the plan was confirmed but that the claims arise from earlier exposure. He rejected their arguments about asbestos-specific rules and notice. As of 1 November 2026 their appeal to the Second Circuit was pending, as far as we could find.

42Lawsuits over alleged asbestos-contaminated talc in Revlon products that a court held barred by Revlon's 2023 bankruptcy plan

Apr 2006

A report, and a maker

On 8 March 2006 an ophthalmologist in New Jersey told the CDC of three contact lens wearers with a rare fungal eye infection. Clusters had been reported in Asia since February, and Bausch & Lomb of Rochester had paused sales of its ReNu solutions in Singapore and Hong Kong. Of the first patients interviewed who remembered their solution, all 26 had used a Bausch & Lomb product, some of them generics B&L made. The company also made Ray-Ban sunglasses until it sold that business in 1999.

109Patients with suspected Fusarium keratitis under investigation in the U.S. by 9 April 2006

19 May 2006

What the CDC found

By 18 May 2006 the CDC had 130 confirmed cases in 26 states and one territory, and 37 of 120 patients had needed a corneal transplant. A case-control study tied the infections to ReNu with MoistureLoc, but not significantly to ReNu MultiPlus; 21 of 118 patients had used only other makers’ products, which the CDC said might reflect poor recall. “The cause of this association is not clear,” it wrote. By September 2006 it had confirmed 180 cases in 35 states.

19.0Odds ratio for using ReNu with MoistureLoc among infected wearers versus matched controls, compared with other solutions; the CDC's range was 2.4 to 944.9

31 May 2009

Settled, not tried

By May 2009 Bausch & Lomb had settled nearly 600 fungal-infection suits, at a reported cost of more than $250 million; seven people had lost an eye and at least 60 had needed transplants. The company says it compensated people “fairly” and will fight claims with “no scientific basis,” and a federal judge later found no reliable science behind 1,024 claims of other infections. A settlement is not a finding of fault; these were settled out of court. Ownership later changed, to Warburg Pincus in 2007 and, by agreement, to Valeant in 2013, after the outbreak; no source here links those owners to the cases.

27 Apr 2016

Washington, April 2016

The Senate Special Committee on Aging asked Valeant, which agreed in 2013 to buy Bausch & Lomb, about four old drugs, among them Nitropress, used for dangerous cardiac conditions, whose prices rose after it bought them: from 310 percent for Nitropress to nearly 6,000 for Cuprimine, the chair said. The committee’s ranking member, Senator Claire McCaskill, said there were “more questions than answers” about Philidor, a pharmacy that ran a Valeant patient program. In 2018 a former Valeant executive and Philidor’s former chief executive were sentenced over a kickback scheme that, the Wall Street Journal reported, defrauded Valeant; the Second Circuit upheld the convictions in 2019 and sent parts of the money orders back.

7 May 1982

Birth defects and a pledge

The FDA approved Roche’s Accutane, isotretinoin, for severe acne on 7 May 1982. Because of the risk of severe birth defects, patients, prescribers and pharmacies must register in iPLEDGE, which includes pregnancy testing. The rules are still being changed: on 9 February 2026 the FDA approved changes meant to lighten the burden while keeping the drug safe to use. This story did not find court records of birth-defect verdicts against Roche.

Jan 2017

The other lawsuits

By 2007 Roche faced some 400 U.S. suits claiming Accutane caused inflammatory bowel disease, a separate matter from birth defects. One plaintiff won in 2007, with no consumer-fraud finding; that verdict was vacated, a 2010 retrial awarded $25.16 million, an appeals court threw it out as late, and the New Jersey Supreme Court reinstated it in January 2017, but the Appellate Division vacated it again that May. Roche told the FDA in June 2009 it was discontinuing Accutane, and in 2010 the FDA found, on a generic maker’s petition, that it was not withdrawn for safety or effectiveness. In 2018, in 532 Crohn’s disease claims, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that the trial court rightly excluded the plaintiffs’ experts; the studies it cited found no causal link, which the plaintiffs’ experts disputed.

29 Dec 2005

An expression of concern

Not a skin product, but a case of what a trial report left out. In December 2005 the journal’s editors said three heart attacks in the Vioxx group were missing from a 2000 trial report, and that it appeared at least two authors knew of them. Merck replied that the events came after a pre-specified cutoff, were disclosed to the FDA in 2000, and did not materially change the article’s conclusions. Merck pulled Vioxx on 30 September 2004; by November 2007 it had won 10 of 15 verdicts, and it agreed to pay $4.85 billion, saying it was not admitting fault.

Mar 2016

Kodaikanal, India

Workers at Hindustan Unilever’s mercury thermometer factory said the exposure caused deaths, miscarriages and serious illness; Scroll reported that a central government committee counted about 45 deaths and over 600 people exposed. The company objected, and Unilever said in 2015 that extensive studies had found no evidence of harm. In March 2016, after 15 years, HUL announced a full and final settlement: undisclosed ex-gratia payments to 591 former workers. It covered the workers; the 2015 pressure had been over the site’s clean-up. The workers’ association still carries the Pond’s name.

17 Oct 2022

Hair relaxers

In October 2022 researchers using the NIH Sister Study reported “the first epidemiologic evidence of association” between straightening products and uterine cancer, and wrote that “more research is warranted”; brands were not recorded. As of September 2026, Reuters reported more than 12,000 suits against L’Oréal, Revlon and others before a federal court in Chicago, with trials possible next year. L’Oréal says the study made no finding of a causal connection, and that the claims lack merit; Revlon denies a connection. In September 2026 Arizona sued L’Oréal; that is an allegation, not a finding.

2.55Hazard ratio for uterine cancer, frequent straightener use (more than four times in the prior year) versus none that year, NIH Sister Study, 2022; 378 cases, use self-reported; about 1.64% of never-users were predicted to develop it by age 70

29 Dec 2022

Rules since

MoCRA, subtitle E of the Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act, was signed into law on 29 December 2022. Companies must now report serious adverse events to the FDA within 15 business days, and the FDA can order recalls, though cosmetics still need no FDA approval before sale. MoCRA told the FDA to set asbestos tests for talc; it proposed a rule in December 2024 and withdrew it in November 2025 to weigh comments, and its page, current to 16 January 2026, shows no new proposal. Journals required trial registration from July 2005 and a 2007 law set a legal duty at ClinicalTrials.gov; this story found no source tying these rules to the cases above.

1938MoCRA is the most significant expansion of FDA's power over cosmetics since the law of that year