A Los Angeles talcum powder lawsuit alleging plaintiff Pui “Amy” Fong’s mesothelioma was caused by asbestos in Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder has concluded with jurors finding in favor of the corporation. According to Law360, Johnson & Johnson’s victory may be owed to its efforts to discredit the testimony of the plaintiff’s expert witnesses.
Johnson & Johnson attorney, Kimberly Branscome, attacked the credibility of expert witness William Longo, an electron microscopy expert, for giving false testimony at trial. Longo failed to disclose that he had previously tested talc and failed to find asbestos in samples he was asked to analyze. Additionally, when Branscome asked Longo to confirm that he had found asbestos in 35% of his samples, Longo confirmed this when the actual figure was 43%.
With this information in hand, Branscome motioned for all of Longo’s testimony to be removed. The judge told jurors to ignore his testimony. Johnson & Johnson made similar motions with other expert witnesses in the Los Angeles talc suit stating that they changed their stories once they agreed to testify.
Fong’s representative, Joseph Satterly, told Law360 that he still firmly believed his client’s claim, refuting Johnson & Johnson’s statement that “Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos nor does it cause cancer, as reflected in more than 40 years of scientific evidence” by stating that during the jury selection process, the FDA announced that they had found asbestos in Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder and numerous internal documents from the 1970s and 1980s corroborated his client’s claims.