When a trial attorney brags to the press about driving down the stock price of a company that continuously prevails in court, it’s time to ask some hard questions.
That’s how Mark Lanier, a Houston-based trial attorney, described the strategy behind his high-profile case built around health scares that do not square with the facts and the evidence. In a CNBC interview, Lanier acknowledged he was working to drive Johnson & Johnson’s stock down to “get their attention” and force a settlement.
Johnson & Johnson’s attention, however, is squarely on winning. In March, the multinational medical device and pharmaceutical company headquartered in New Jersey achieved its latest victory in a string of liability lawsuits when a jury delivered a unanimous verdict in its favor rejecting claims that its baby powder products cause cancer. Several other plaintiff awards have also been overturned on appeal, showing verdicts against the company generally don’t stick. Despite the courts repeatedly spurning the cases, the plaintiffs’ attorneys are pressing forward, hoping legal expenses and downward pressure on the company stock will achieve their aims. Even the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are now investigating the allegations.
A large body of independent scientific evidence debunks the central claims against the company and its cosmetic products — yet Johnson & Johnson has been targeted in almost 12,000 lawsuits nationwide, assisted by credulous reporting driven by a generic anticorporate narrative instead of a focus on sound science.
Both the New York Times and Reuters have adopted the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ claim that company officials knew talc, a soft, naturally occurring mineral used in the baby powder products, was laced with cancer-causing asbestos. However, evidence cited in the reports shows the opposite: It appears that officials have gone to great lengths to keep baby powder free of contaminants.
Sadly, the press is now dug in. Studies from credible, independent organizations such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Food and Drug Administration, and others are largely unreported or only mentioned if a Johnson & Johnson spokesman cites them. Thus, the crowded field of authorities who exhaustively corroborate Johnson & Johnson’s defense are neutered as “studies cited by the company.”
For example, the Nurses’ Health Study sampled 78,630 women over a 24-year period and found talc users did not experience any increase in the rate of ovarian cancer regardless of how much they used the talc. The New York Times and Reuters downplayed these crucial findings as a “study cited by Johnson and Johnson,” giving more air to the assertions of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
“Thousands of tests repeatedly confirm that our consumer talc products do not contain asbestos,” Johnson & Johnson says on a fact page devoted to talc. “Our talc comes from ore sources confirmed to meet our stringent specifications. Not only do we and our suppliers routinely test to ensure our talc does not contain asbestos, our talc has also been tested and confirmed to be asbestos-free by a range of independent laboratories and universities, including the FDA, Harvard School of Public Health, and Mount Sinai Hospital.”
The company’s science-focused fact page does the work the reporters seem reluctant to do, adding context and science that are either omitted or distorted in the reporting.
The media would be wrong to take the company line and report it uncritically, but it does exactly that for the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Allowing courtroom histrionics to substitute for readily available scientific findings sets a disturbing precedent. High-powered attorneys want massive financial settlements, and the science only stands in their way. Litigation through the press is a viable workaround.
Lawsuits make lawyers rich, less so for plaintiffs. They can also drive media coverage. But they don’t always serve the public interest.
Kevin Mooney (@KevinMooneyDC) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., who writes for several national publications.
