Johnson Ltd Settlement: Talc MDL, Verdicts, and Claim Coverage

There is no single Johnson & Johnson talcum powder settlement that resolves the injury lawsuits. A $700 million deal with 43 state attorneys general closed in 2024, and a $505 million payment into the Imerys supplier bankruptcy trust followed the same year, but neither pays individual cancer claimants. Three attempts by J&J to wrap all personal-injury claims into a bankruptcy trust have been dismissed, and as of mid-2026 more than 68,000 federal cases plus tens of thousands of state cases are moving forward one by one, with a court-appointed mediator working on a possible global resolution. ¹²

What Has Actually Been Settled

Two settlements are final, and neither one covers individual injury claims.

The first is the state attorneys general deal. On June 11, 2024, a consent judgment filed in New York State Supreme Court resolved deceptive-marketing claims brought by 43 states over J&J’s failure to disclose the presence of asbestos and the potential link to serious health problems in its talc products. J&J agreed to pay $700 million to the participating states over three years and to permanently stop manufacturing, marketing, selling, and distributing baby powder, body powder, or cosmetic powder products containing talc in the United States, including Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower. New York’s share was $44 million; the District of Columbia received about $3.05 million. ³⁴ The money goes to the states, not to individuals who used the product.

The second is the Imerys supplier deal. Imerys Talc America, J&J’s primary cosmetic-talc supplier for decades, filed for bankruptcy in 2019. In July 2024, J&J agreed to pay at least $505 million into the Imerys bankruptcy trust by December 31, 2025, settling long-running disputes over indemnification agreements dating back to 1989 and over roughly $1.5 billion in remaining insurance coverage. The trust splits payments 52.5 percent for ovarian cancer claims and 47.5 percent for mesothelioma and lung cancer claims. Critically, this settlement does not prevent individual talc claimants from pursuing direct claims against J&J. ⁵⁶

Why There Is No Global Injury Settlement

J&J tried three times to resolve every personal-injury claim at once through a maneuver known as the “Texas Two-Step”: create a subsidiary, load it with talc liabilities, and put that subsidiary into Chapter 11 bankruptcy so all claims funnel into a single trust while the parent company keeps operating.

The first attempt used a subsidiary called LTL Management, filed in October 2021 and backed by a J&J funding agreement valued at up to $61.5 billion. In January 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit dismissed the case, holding that “only a putative debtor in financial distress” can access the bankruptcy system and that LTL was not in financial distress. ⁷ A second LTL filing was dismissed in July 2023. ⁸

The third attempt, filed in September 2024 in the Southern District of Texas under a new subsidiary called Red River Talc LLC, proposed roughly $9 billion to resolve ovarian and gynecological cancer claims. J&J reported that 83 percent of claimants voted to support the plan. On March 31, 2025, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez dismissed the case in a 57-page opinion, finding that law firms had cast ballots for tens of thousands of claimants without direct authorization, thousands of “no” votes had been switched to “yes,” many claimants got an “unreasonably short” window to vote, and the plan included “impermissible nonconsensual third-party releases” shielding more than 700 non-debtor entities. “There is no real company or jobs to save here,” Judge Lopez wrote. “This case is about whether voters will accept a deal.” ⁹¹⁰ J&J announced it would not appeal and would litigate the claims individually instead.

What Individual Claimants Are Getting in Court

Because there is no global deal, the current path to compensation runs through individual trials. Results have varied enormously by jurisdiction, cancer type, and evidence.

In Ingham v. Johnson & Johnson (2018, St. Louis), a jury awarded 22 women a combined $4.69 billion. The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld the causation finding but reduced the award to about $2.1 billion, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case in June 2021.¹¹¹²
In December 2025, a Baltimore jury awarded Cherie Craft more than $1.5 billion in a peritoneal mesothelioma case, including $59.84 million in compensatory damages, $1 billion in punitive damages against J&J, and $500 million against subsidiary Pecos River Talc. J&J called the verdict “egregious” and “unconstitutional” and said it would appeal.¹³
A Los Angeles jury awarded $966 million in the Mae Moore mesothelioma case in 2025. In March 2026, Judge Ruth Kwan vacated $950 million of the punitive damages, finding insufficient evidence of malice, and left $16 million in compensatory damages standing.¹⁴
A June 2026 Los Angeles jury awarded $32 million in compensatory damages to the family of Maria Lozano. That same month, a separate Los Angeles bellwether trial ended in a defense verdict for J&J in an ovarian cancer case brought by three women.¹
A Connecticut judge in June 2026 increased a mesothelioma verdict from $15 million to $25 million by adding punitive damages, and a Philadelphia jury awarded $250,000 in an ovarian cancer death case in February 2026.¹

J&J has pointed to reductions and reversals on appeal as evidence that early verdicts do not survive review. Many large awards have in fact been cut or overturned. ¹³

The Federal MDL and a Possible Future Settlement

The federal cases are consolidated as MDL No. 2738 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey before Judge Michael Shipp. As of June 2026 the MDL listed 68,029 pending cases. ¹

Two developments matter for anyone tracking a potential global deal. First, a mediator, Fouad Kurdi, was appointed for the MDL in July 2025, and settlement discussions were ongoing as of April 2026. ² Second, in January 2026, court-appointed special master Freda Wolfson issued a 658-page recommendation that plaintiffs’ expert testimony on talc and ovarian cancer is admissible, finding a “statistically significant association between genital talc use and ovarian cancer” and calling the experts’ methods “reliable, mainstream scientific methods.” Judge Shipp has not yet issued a formal ruling. ¹⁵ The first federal bellwether trial, Judkins v. Johnson & Johnson, involves a New Hampshire plaintiff alleging ovarian cancer and is expected in the second half of 2026, with an anticipated length of 30 to 60 days. ¹⁶

Who and What the Claims Cover

The lawsuits allege that J&J’s talc-based baby powder and related products were contaminated with asbestos and caused two main injuries: ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Plaintiffs cite internal documents from 1971 through the early 2000s indicating that raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for asbestos, including three lab tests from 1972 to 1975 that J&J did not disclose to the FDA. ¹⁷ J&J denies the allegations and maintains that its talc products are safe, do not contain asbestos, and do not cause cancer. ¹⁸ The scientific community is split: the U.S. CDC does not list talc as an ovarian cancer risk factor, while the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies genital use of talc-based body powder as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” ¹⁹

Talc asbestos exposure was alleged in 40 percent of all mesothelioma lawsuits filed in 2025, and filings were up 47 percent as of May 2026 compared to prior periods. ²⁰²¹²²

For anyone with an active or potential claim, the practical reality as of mid-2026 is that recovery comes either through the Imerys trust (which pays talc claimants directly under its 52.5/47.5 allocation) or through individual litigation against J&J itself. The $700 million attorneys general settlement money goes to states, not to product users, and the three failed bankruptcies mean no J&J-funded claimant trust exists.

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