A California jury has determined that pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson must pay $18.8 million to a patient who blamed the company's talcum baby powder for causing mesothelioma, the Los Angeles Times reported July 18.
The jury's ruling comes just days after a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, known as LTL Management, filed a lawsuit against multiple physicians for publishing separate research linking its talcum powder to mesothelioma, specifically.
The company has so far in that lawsuit claimed that the physicians' research is a "house of cards [that] is collapsing as the truth comes to light."
While it's unclear how Johnson & Johnson's lawsuit against the physicians will move forward, the California patient's victory may make it more unlikely for other patients who experienced the same circumstances to accept settlements that were previously offered to them by J&J, according to the Times.
"This verdict will sway people not to be inclined to accept what they can get under that $8.9-billion settlement if they can get $18 million at trial," said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond (Va.) law professor, told the Times. "This is not good for J&J, to be sure. It may discombobulate the settlement negotiations."