Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has agreed with more than 40 US states on a possible deal regarding their investigation into how they advertised their talc-based baby powder and other products.
The big healthcare company said it planned to pay $700 million, which confirms the amount that was reported before.
The agreement would be a piece of a larger deal the company is trying to make to settle claims about the safety of its products.
J&J says their products are okay for people to use.
However, it is dealing with over 50,000 lawsuits from people who say that using its talc-based baby powder gave them cancer. Some of them also say that the product had asbestos, which can cause cancer.
The company made a new company to handle the lawsuits in court in order to settle them.
Last year, it offered to pay almost $9 billion to settle the claims, even though it thought the claims were not valid. It just wanted to put the issue behind them.
However, the judges stopped the plans because they decided that the company’s subsidiary was not struggling financially and couldn’t use bankruptcy to deal with the lawsuits.
State officials did not say anything about the possible agreement.
Erik Haas, who is a high-ranking employee at Johnson & Johnson, said that the company is still working on finding a solution to a big problem.
The company is still trying different ways to solve the talc lawsuit once and for all. Last week, it was revealed that the company made progress by reaching an initial agreement with a group of 43 state attorneys general to settle their claims about talc.
“We will work on resolving the concerns of people who do not want to agree to our bankruptcy plan by going to court or reaching an agreement. ”
Johnson & Johnson has mostly won the lawsuits about its talc products and says the products didn’t have asbestos and didn’t cause cancer.
However, it has suffered from some large losses, including one case where 22 women were given a court order of over $2 billion.
Experts predict that the company will end up paying over $10 billion to settle the legal disputes.
A lawyer who helps people who used to be customers said this month that it was good for his clients that the state matters were resolved because it got rid of things that were bothering them.
“We need” can be changed to “We require. ” The main goal is to reach an agreement about talc powder all over the world by 2024. “This is helpful,” Ronald Miller said in a statement.
In 2020, Johnson & Johnson stopped selling its talc-based baby powder in the US because they said people were getting the wrong information about it and not buying it. The powder is used to prevent nappy rash and as a dry shampoo. It later said it would stop selling its products all over the world.
The company had been selling the baby powder for almost 130 years before they made that decision. It still sells a product with corn-starch.
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J&J strikes agreement with US states over claims pertaining to baby powder
