Johnson and Johnson has reserved almost $4 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits
over cancer causing baby powder. Attorney Steve Luongo joins me to talk about this.
Steve, your reaction is the same as mine, $4 billion is not enough. People are dropping
like flies from ovarian cancer that this company knew about. They've been punished so many
times in lawsuits. It's almost like they're running into the wall, bashing their head
up against the wall, thinking something's going to change. Nothing's going to change.
These facts don't change. This is a company that screwed up major and they know it.
Exactly. And talking about the facts, they've known since the seventies, internal documents
have shown that the presence of asbestos was in their talcum powder. They didn't warn the
FDA. They didn't warn their consumers. And here we are, several decades later, women
are developing mesothelioma, but primarily that ovarian cancer, which these lawsuits
are coming down on and coming down on Johnson and Johnson hard with major verdicts.
Okay. The significance of mesothelioma is that asbestos is the cause of, of, of mesothelioma.
It's a, what they call a scar based cancer. I've tried a lot of these cases. This is the
same analysis here. This is a scar based injury that is effecting, effecting women, the ovaries
of women. It's, it's causing scarring in there and resulting in cancer. Now, they've known
they had asbestos in their talc for a long time, true?
Absolutely. Yes, sir. So they've known, like I said, the internal documents have shown
since the seventies that the, the specialists was present in their documents or in their
products rather. As well as studies that have been going on since the seventies, I think
the first study came out in 1971 that showed a possible link between talcum powder and
ovarian cancer. That study was well known, well published. Documents throughout the eighties
and nineties, as well as surveys and studies throughout that time period, showed that they
were well aware of the risk of ovarian cancer, as well as the presence of asbestos.
You did a checklist for me saying the number of times, hit for $100 million, okay. Hit
for $30 million. Hit for $4.6 billion. Hit for $25 million. Hit for $37 million. Hit
for $417 million. Hit for $110 million. The company, here's what's happening, I promise
you. The CEO does not want to give it up because it's going to happen on his or her watch.
This is how it happened. You don't want to make it, you don't want to pay out the big
money on your watch. You want to wait till the next CEO comes along and pay it off. There's
a real ugly story to this side, you know what it is? It is that Wall Street is controlling
lawyers who take money from Wall Street. They get loans from organizations like Fortress
and you know, the big, the big hedge funds. They're taking money from those people to
where they can't settle the cases. So it's both sides, it's Johnson and Johnson and some
of these lawyers who are, who are moneyed up from Wall Street, which should never happen
with a plaintiff's lawyer. What's your take on that?
Well, the dam is going to break. We know that last year Johnson and Johnson made some significant
moves. We talked about the a hundred million that they set aside, the deal with women and
a thousand lawsuits approximately, where asbestos was found there. They've also set aside through
their financial documents, the four billion that you talked about earlier, and they removed
the baby powder with talc entirely from the market back in May of 2022.
But what happens when Wall Street tells a claimant's lawyer, okay, you've got a thousand
cases, you have to hold out for more money, even though it's a good settlement. That means
Wall Street, here's what I'd recommend. People need to ask their lawyer. Are you taking money
from Wall Street? And you as a plant, a claimant's lawyer, are you taking money from Wall Street?
Because if you are it's Wall Street, making the decisions about whether you should settle
the cases or not. These cases should be settled. The trials, one trial after another, they've
been hammered. The CEO needs to give it up right now and say, look, I'm the guy that
maybe has to pay out all the money, but I'll live with it. Got about 30 seconds. What's
your take? Well right now with the litigation and there
is the MDL up in New Jersey that has approximately 25,000 cases.
We are full disclosure, we're helping to run that MDL.
We are, we are, and we're not taking Wall Street money and we're fighting for them.
We're trying to get the settlements. Obviously we're looking at that 4.6 million or billion
dollar settlement and verdict that came in St. Louis. The final appeal of that hasn't
been determined yet, but that's definitely a governing factor. Right now, the judge in
the MDL, MDL has issued us as well as the opposing side, to go and select the bellwether
cases. I think that's really going to start getting some traction with this case.
That means, choose the case that you want to go to trial with. When that happens, things
start moving. Absolutely.
This company can't take many more hits. The CEO in charge right now needs to make a very
important decision. Do I want this company to stay alive or do I want to be the CEO who
puts an end to Johnson and Johnson? Because I'm worried about my exit package. That's
what's, that's what's at stake here. Thank you for joining me, Steve.
Thank you, sir. Boston Scientific has reached a $188 million
settlement nationwide over it's phony marketing claims about certain surgical mesh products.
These products were found to be totally unnecessary for most procedures and ended up causing extreme
pain and bleeding among patients, per, absolute permanent injury. I've got Robert Price with
me, who was one of the lawyers that made all that happen, has been involved with the mesh
case for a long time. Robert, tell us about this litigation, but fill us in about what
this is about. What was the case about, why the settlement and what's ahead of us?
Thanks, thanks for having me on, Mike. So the Boston Scientific settlement was a settlement
about the pelvic mesh products, which were products that were implanted in women to treat
incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse and things like that.
And you worked that case as well. We've been working that case and many other
manufacturers for over 10 years. And essentially this, this was a settlement on behalf of AGs
around the country that found that Boston Scientific had misled consumers, misled doctors
about the true risks associated with the devices. Okay. So give us a recap on what you're doing
right now. So what we're doing now is we see a lot of
these same manufacturers did the pelvic meshes also have done hernia meshes for many years,
and it's the same by-product, it's the same synthetic plastic polymer used to repair hernias,
as well as the pelvic organ issues as we just talked about as well.
Well, you're talking about the material. The, but the thing that struck me is when you discovered
that they were using nonmedical grade material. Talk about, they're using non, they're using
fishing line, basically, that's sold in a fishing store. Talk about that.
Absolutely. What was uncovered in trials a few years ago, and what we're working up,
the backstory, even, even deeper. What some companies do, not necessarily all of them,
but several companies do this is they use a non-medical grade by-product so literally
just bottom shelf, not approved for human usage type stuff. It breaks down, it degrades.
It actually says not app, approved for human use, right?
Right. The stuff that you get from the factory actually comes with a warning that says, do
not use this in the human body. But they used it anyway.
They used it anyway, and what we're also discovering, Mike, is that they are coming up with different
essentially shell companies to run this stuff through. So people don't know any better.
That's another thing we're discovering. Well, what do you mean by that? They're, they're,
they're setting up shell companies. They're moving from the manufacturer of the, of the
material, moving through a shell company, and then moving to the people who create the
mesh product. Right. Right.
To try to wash the information. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay. So as this goes far, as this goes forward, we're talking about a hernia mesh. What kind
of injury does it cause? What, what should be people, what should people be aware of?
So, so a lot of these products have these gimmicky coatings and things like that on
them. And what we're seeing is the coating breaks down too soon. It doesn't work correctly.
And these meshes actually, they, they adhere to people's organs. They'll blow out too soon.
They'll fail, catastrophic injuries like bowel punctures, internal bleeding, you said, organ
perforations. Does the material, does the material migrate
through their system after it blows out? It can, it absolutely can. It can blow out.
It can move over and then you can have some of this chemical leaching that goes on with
this really low grade stuff, high inflammatory responses that cause gut problems and things
like that as well. Well, Robert, one of the things that struck
me is this is a procedure that's not even necessary because a doctor that's trained
without mesh can create, he can fix a hernia without any of this garbage, right?
A lot of times. So industry came in and said, look, you need
this because you're a doctor who's not a specialist in fixing hernias, but now you can increase
your practice if you'll use our material. Isn't that kind of the scenario here?
That's right. We call it, we call them the gimmick meshes, which is they go to a doctor
and say, yeah, you know, we know this hernia is real small and it would take you 20, 30,
40 minutes to do this, but it'll take you five minutes with this easy patch. They think
that, you know, the doctors, a lot of times they think it's FDA approved. They think it's
been studied when it really hasn't. And a lot of times it's unnecessary. Doctors don't
need to do it, but it happens because they sold them a bill of goods and it's turned
out the truth is, is unveiled many years later. Actually, when you look at the pelvic mesh
cases, the juries jumped all over these, these companies and these are the same companies,
aren't they? Right. Right.
Robert, thank you for joining me. Okay. Thanks, Mike.