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• A federal judge has questioned whether plaintiffs can prove that J&J talc caused their individual cancers.
• Approximately 69,000 federal claims could face dismissal over insufficient expert evidence.
• Plaintiffs have until November 19 to explain why their cases should remain alive.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

TRENTON, N.J. — Johnson & Johnson moved significantly closer Wednesday to a potential mass dismissal of approximately 69,000 talc-related cancer claims after a federal magistrate judge questioned whether plaintiffs possess admissible expert evidence connecting the company’s products to each woman’s ovarian cancer.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Rukhsanah L. Singh of the District of New Jersey said testimony recently given by two plaintiffs’ experts raised a fundamental problem extending far beyond the six bellwether cases presently being prepared for trial: whether any individual plaintiff can establish that her use of J&J talcum powder specifically caused her disease.

The litigation centers on allegations that Johnson’s Baby Powder and other talc-based products caused ovarian cancer. J&J has consistently denied those allegations, maintaining that its cosmetic talc was safe, did not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.

At issue is the legal distinction between general and specific causation. It is not enough for plaintiffs to offer evidence suggesting that talc is capable of causing ovarian cancer generally. Each claimant must also present reliable, admissible expert testimony demonstrating that talc exposure was a substantial cause of her particular cancer.

That second requirement now appears to pose a potentially case-ending obstacle across the sprawling multidistrict litigation.

According to Singh’s opinion, plaintiffs’ experts Dr. Judith Wolf and Dr. Daniel Clarke-Pearson testified in May as part of the pretrial process for six bellwether cases. Their testimony reportedly revealed that they could not fully exclude other potential causes of the plaintiffs’ ovarian cancers.

“If such uncertainty is indeed reality, then how can any plaintiff here meet her burden on the merits of her claim?” Singh wrote, according to Reuters.

The court’s concern does not mean the entire federal litigation has been dismissed. Singh expressly cautioned that the causation dispute would not result in an “instant dismissal” of the consolidated claims. Instead, the court has placed plaintiffs on notice that they must identify a legally sufficient basis for proving specific causation.

Plaintiffs have until November 19 to explain why their cases should not be dismissed for failure to produce an admissible expert opinion establishing that J&J talc caused each claimant’s cancer.

The order effectively places the burden on plaintiffs’ counsel to demonstrate that the expert shortcomings exposed during the bellwether process can be cured—or that other qualified experts and evidence exist to carry the claims through summary judgment and into trial.

J&J quickly portrayed the ruling as a turning point.

“Today’s decision brings these cases one step closer [to the] inevitable, equitable and appropriate outcome—the complete dismissal of the talc litigation,” Erik Haas, J&J’s vice president of litigation, said in a statement.

The company’s prediction, however, remains contested and legally premature. The November proceedings will likely determine whether the perceived expert-evidence gap is limited to the selected bellwether plaintiffs or represents a litigation-wide defect.

Bellwether trials are designed to test representative cases within a large multidistrict litigation. Although their verdicts do not formally decide the thousands of remaining claims, the outcomes can reveal how juries may evaluate common evidence, help courts manage recurring legal issues and influence settlement negotiations.

The six selected talc cases were expected to provide an early measure of the strength and potential value of the ovarian cancer claims. Instead, the expert depositions may have exposed a threshold evidentiary issue capable of preventing those cases—and potentially thousands of others—from reaching a jury.

Under federal evidence standards, expert testimony must rest on reliable methods and provide more than speculation or a mere possibility of causation. In toxic-tort and pharmaceutical litigation, courts frequently scrutinize whether an expert adequately considered other known risk factors through a process commonly described as a differential diagnosis or differential etiology.

An expert does not necessarily have to eliminate every conceivable alternative cause. But the expert generally must offer a scientifically reliable explanation for concluding that the defendant’s product, rather than another factor, caused the plaintiff’s injury.

If plaintiffs cannot make that individualized showing, evidence that talc may be associated with ovarian cancer at the population level may not be enough to establish liability in any particular case.

The federal litigation resumed in March 2025 after remaining largely suspended for more than three years while J&J pursued repeated efforts to resolve the talc liabilities through the bankruptcy of a subsidiary. Those attempts failed, returning the claims to the tort system and clearing the way for bellwether preparation.

J&J continues to face additional talc lawsuits in state courts nationwide, where the results have been mixed. The company has prevailed in a number of trials, while other juries have returned substantial compensatory and punitive-damages awards for plaintiffs.

Those state-court outcomes underscore that Wednesday’s ruling does not resolve all litigation involving J&J talc. State cases may involve different plaintiffs, diseases, experts, evidentiary records and procedural rules. Some claims also concern mesothelioma and alleged asbestos exposure rather than the ovarian cancer causation question now confronting the federal litigation.

J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the United States in 2020 and replaced it with a cornstarch-based formulation. The company later ended worldwide sales of the talc product while continuing to deny that the change reflected a safety concern.

For the approximately 69,000 federal claimants, the next major battle will not center merely on whether talc can cause cancer. It will center on whether each plaintiff can produce qualified expert testimony capable of proving that J&J’s product caused her cancer.

Unless plaintiffs can answer that question with admissible, case-specific evidence by November 19, the bellwether process intended to begin testing the claims before juries could instead become the mechanism that ends a substantial portion of the litigation before trial.

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