Plaintiffs must provide evidence linking talc use to their ovarian cancer

A federal judge in New Jersey has raised doubts about whether roughly 69,000 women suing Johnson & Johnson can prove that the company’s talc products caused their ovarian cancer.

Judge Rukhsanah Singh on Wednesday granted Johnson & Johnson’s request to require the plaintiffs to explain why their lawsuits should not be dismissed.

The ruling requires the plaintiffs to show that they can produce reliable expert testimony linking talc use to each woman’s cancer.

Johnson & Johnson, which has its global headquarters in New Brunswick, has denied that its talc products cause cancer. The company says its talc was safe and did not contain asbestos. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the United States in 2020 and replaced it with a cornstarch-based version.

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The federal lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson were consolidated into multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The litigation has been pending for more than a decade.

The cases allege that women developed ovarian cancer after using Johnson & Johnson talcum powder products. To win, each plaintiff must do more than show that talc can cause cancer generally. She must also present reliable evidence that talc contributed to her own cancer.

Singh said recent testimony from two experts chosen by plaintiffs in six test cases raised serious questions about whether they can make that connection. The six cases are known as bellwether cases. They were selected to go to trial first so the results could help both sides evaluate thousands of similar lawsuits and potentially guide settlement talks.

The plaintiffs hired two gynecologic cancer specialists, Judith Wolf and Daniel Clarke-Pearson, to testify about what caused the women’s cancers. But the plaintiffs withdrew the experts in June after hearings about whether their testimony could be used in court. They have since indicated that they want to bring the experts back.

Wolf testified that she did not know of a way to rule individual cancer risk factors in or out. Clarke-Pearson said he considered known risk factors but could not rule out unknown causes of ovarian cancer, according to the decision. The experts also did not clearly explain how talc and other risk factors might have worked together to cause the women’s cancers, Singh wrote.

“They effectively testified that the applicable known science does not provide them with a way to separate or individually analyze the various risk factors,” the judge wrote.

“These are some of the critical challenges that raise deep skepticism that a plaintiff can proffer admissible expert opinion to support a finding that talcum powder use specifically caused her ovarian cancer,” Singh wrote. “If such uncertainty is indeed reality, then how can any plaintiff here meet her burden on the merits of her claim?”

Lawyers representing the women argued that Johnson & Johnson misrepresented the experts’ testimony. They said the women do not have to prove that talc was the only cause of their cancer, only that it was a major contributing factor.

They also argued that testimony involving six women should not determine the fate of tens of thousands of others who have not yet had an opportunity to present evidence about their individual cases.

Singh said the process would give all plaintiffs an opportunity to make their case. She also said Johnson & Johnson had not yet provided the legal arguments and evidence needed to dismiss the lawsuits immediately.

The federal lawsuits resumed in March 2025 after being paused for more than three years while Johnson & Johnson unsuccessfully tried to settle the claims through bankruptcy proceedings.

Singh acknowledged the toll of the long-running litigation, noting that some plaintiffs have died while waiting for their cases to be resolved.

“Time is not healing any wounds,” she wrote. “With more than a decade into this protracted litigation, all parties deserve an opportunity to assess what claims may be meritorious and what claims may not.”