Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $5.5 billion (€4.8 billion) to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc-based baby powder and other talc products caused ovarian cancer, marking a major step toward ending one of the most significant product-liability disputes in recent U.S. corporate history.
The company said the settlement would cover about 69,000 cases consolidated in federal court in New Jersey, along with related state court cases, accounting for 99.75 percent of the remaining talc claims currently pending against the company.
Law firms representing plaintiffs confirmed the agreement and described it as a favorable outcome after nearly a decade of litigation over the safety of Johnson & Johnson’s talc products.
The proposed settlement still requires approval from the federal judge overseeing the multidistrict litigation in New Jersey before it can take effect.
Johnson & Johnson continues to deny that its talc products caused cancer. Erik Haas, the company’s vice president of litigation, said the claims lacked merit but that the company had decided to settle in order to bring the matter to a close.
“While we are confident the company would have ultimately prevailed with further litigation, as it has in the vast majority of cases tried to date, this resolution allows the company to put this matter behind it and remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives,” Haas said in a statement.
The settlement follows a significant legal development earlier this month, when a federal judge expressed skepticism about whether individual plaintiffs could prove that talc specifically caused their ovarian cancer. The ruling was viewed as a potentially important victory for Johnson & Johnson in the long-running dispute.
The company has consistently maintained that its talc products were safe and free of asbestos, a known carcinogen that has been at the center of many of the allegations. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the United States in 2020 and replaced it with a cornstarch-based version.
The litigation had been paused for more than three years while the company pursued several attempts to resolve the claims through the bankruptcy of a subsidiary created to handle the talc liabilities. Those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, and the lawsuits resumed in March 2025.
Unlike the earlier proposed bankruptcy settlements, the new agreement applies only to existing claims and does not resolve potential future lawsuits involving talc products.
The talc litigation has weighed on Johnson & Johnson for years, generating extensive legal costs and uncertainty. If approved, the settlement would remove the overwhelming majority of the remaining pending claims and could bring substantial closure to a legal battle that has become one of the largest mass-tort disputes in the pharmaceutical and consumer-products industry.
