Jakarta –
Johnson & Johnson has again filed for bankruptcy amid a cancer patient lawsuit. But the filing was rejected by a federal bankruptcy judge in the US.
US Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan in Trenton, New Jersey, ruled that J&J’s bankruptcy should be overturned because the lawsuit against loose powder did not put the company into immediate “financial difficulties”.
The first steps of J&J’s bankruptcy started in 2021, when J&J transferred its talc obligations to a new company, LTL Management, and immediately put the company into bankruptcy. LTL’s first bankruptcy was dismissed in April after a US appeals court ruled that LTL was not in sufficient financial distress to qualify for bankruptcy protection.
LTL quickly filed for bankruptcy again, arguing that its second bid had won more support from the plaintiffs for a comprehensive settlement of current and future lawsuits alleging that J&J’s baby powder and other talc products sometimes contain asbestos and cause mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and other cancers.
J&J says its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos.
Attorneys representing cancer victims, along with the US Department of Justice’s bankruptcy supervisor, have called for LTL’s second bankruptcy to be dismissed as an abuse of US bankruptcy law.
Andy Birchfield, an attorney representing cancer victims, said the second bankruptcy was meant to keep the talc lawsuits from hearing by a jury.
“J&J has spent two years trying to convince us that somehow a half-trillion-dollar company went bankrupt,” said Birchfield.
“It’s time the bullshit stopped and J&J accepted some responsibility.”
By settling lawsuits in bankruptcy, J&J can impose settlement terms on cancer victims who conflicted with the agreement, and prevent new lawsuits from being filed by people who develop cancer in the future as a result of their powder use.
Previously, J&J was required to pay a fine of US $ 18.8 million (Rp. 282.4 billion) to Emory Hernandez Valadez (24) who claimed to have cancer due to exposure to the baby powder.
Valadez said he developed mesothelioma, a deadly aggressive cancer of the tissue around his heart from exposure to asbestos and a J&J talc carcinogen that he used as a child.
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2023-07-30 03:15:26
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