Judge Disagrees With Jury, Overturns $950M J&J Punitive Award
Legislation & Litigation
Written by Travis Rodgers and Amy Edel | Edited by Walter Pacheco
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ruth Kwan overturned a jury’s $950 million in punitive damages awarded to Mae K. Moore’s surviving children in their wrongful death lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson. Judge Kwan issued her ruling on March 13, 2026. Judge Kwan didn’t address the $16 million in compensatory damages in her ruling.
Moore died in December 2021 from mesothelioma at age 88. She had initially filed a personal injury lawsuit arguing her cancer was directly connected to her decades of using J&J’s talcum powder. The lawsuit alleged the talc was contaminated with asbestos. Upon her passing, her daughters transitioned her original lawsuit to a wrongful death claim.
The October 2025 jury verdict was historic. Jurors found J&J 100% responsible for Moore’s mesothelioma diagnosis, answering yes to 25 questions covering negligence, product defects, intentional concealment and knowledge of asbestos contamination risks.
They found J&J acted with malice, oppression or fraud and awarded Moore’s family a total of $966 million. This included $16 million in compensatory damages for Moore’s pain and her three daughters’ loss, as well as $950 million to punish J&J for its conduct.
Moore’s family says they will fight Judge Kwan’s ruling. Meanwhile, J&J faces tens of thousands of talc lawsuits still working through the courts, including a December 2025 Baltimore jury verdict awarding $1.56 billion to Cherie Craft, a Maryland woman whose mesothelioma has been linked to J&J talc products.
Moore’s Family Will Appeal Judge Kwan’s Ruling
Mae Moore’s family will appeal Judge Kwan’s ruling. Their attorneys have said publicly the family respectfully disagrees with the court’s decision and intends to fight it.
The court documents Moore’s family filed describe a teacher, widow and mother of three daughters who trusted a product she used her entire life. “Mae K. Moore was exposed to asbestos on a regular and frequent basis while she used asbestos-containing talcum powder products on herself and her children from approximately the 1930s to today.”
She and her family, the complaint states, relied on J&J “to provide any safety information to her and her family and to make sure any life-threatening hazards were communicated.” The complaint alleges J&J assured consumers there was “zero chance” of exposing their families to asbestos, and that those assurances “were false when they were made, and J&J knew they were false when they made those statements.”
Moore’s daughters Joy Moore, Kathryn Pratt and Carol Farquharson filed their wrongful death lawsuit in February 2022. The complaint alleged J&J had known for decades its talc products contained asbestos fibers and had actively concealed that knowledge from consumers and federal regulators alike. The jury agreed with the family’s account of what J&J knew and when.
Judge Kwan’s Ruling and What It Means for the Appeal
While Judge Kwan left the jury’s finding J&J caused Moore’s mesothelioma intact, she disagreed J&J acted with malice. In her ruling she wrote the plaintiffs hadn’t “clearly and convincingly established” J&J knew about asbestos in its products and “failed to act.”Before delivering their verdict in October 2025, the jury was presented with J&J’s own internal documents and correspondence with outside experts. This included reports from as early as the 1930s.
Examples From the Trial Record
- May 1958: A Battelle Memorial Institute report documented J&J’s attempts to float asbestos out of its talc.
- August 1959: A Battelle report documented ultrasonic grinding attempts.
- April 1960: A Battelle report documented attempts using reagents.
- April 1969: An internal J&J document showed the company knew tremolite found in its talc products could cause “pulmonary diseases and cancer” and acknowledged the risk of litigation.
- July 1971: An internal memo stated “there is no place for asbestos in talc, trace amounts were not acceptable, and any talc with asbestos should be removed from the market.”
- August 1971: An internal J&J memo acknowledged “the need to upgrade the quality control for talc and baby powder to address the asbestos content.”
On appeal, the family’s attorneys will likely work with the same evidence the jury saw before a different, higher court judge. They’ll argue the trial court assessed that evidence incorrectly. New evidence is generally not permitted on appeal. J&J plans to appeal the causation finding and the $16 million compensatory damages award.
J&J Still Faces Tens of Thousands of Talc Lawsuits
Judge Kwan’s ruling is one development in a much larger legal fight. J&J still faces lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they developed ovarian cancer or mesothelioma after using J&J baby powder and other talc products.
Also in October 2025, a Connecticut judge increased an earlier verdict against J&J to $25 million in the case of Evan Plotkin, an artist and father of three diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2021. Ben Braly of the DOBS law firm, which also represented Moore’s family, said the firm hoped “Johnson & Johnson will take this opinion to heart and consider the damage they caused to people like Evan Plotkin across the country.”
In December 2025, a Baltimore jury awarded $1.56 billion to Cherie Craft, a Maryland woman diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma after decades of using J&J’s talc-based baby powder. The award surpassed the Moore verdict as the largest ever against J&J for a single plaintiff.
J&J has tried to resolve the broader talc litigation through bankruptcy three times. Federal courts rejected the proposal each time, ruling J&J didn’t meet the financial distress standard required for bankruptcy protection.
The company stopped selling talc-based powder worldwide in 2023 and switched to a cornstarch formula. It maintains its talc products were safe, didn’t contain asbestos and don’t cause cancer.
J&J Welcomes the Ruling but Plans to Appeal
J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation Erik Haas said Judge Kwan made the right call in overturning the punitive damages award. However, he said the company plans to appeal leaving the compensatory damages intact.
In a statement, Haas called the punitive damages award “devoid of evidentiary support and patently unconstitutional.” He took issue with the jury’s finding that J&J’s talc products caused Moore’s mesothelioma and said decades of extensive testing showed J&J’s talc products didn’t contain asbestos.
