81–90 of 336 posts
Hard one to decide though the researchers did profit nicely and they are not naming their patients name. Are they real patients and if so J&J does should have the right to research their health records. Overall Where there's money to be made there usually is shenanigans. That's goes for both sides.
External-use-only products based on talc have been yanked from all shelves in every pharmacy and grocery store nationwide, while ironically, talc still remains on the shelves in pill form: alli® is an OTC weight-loss medication. https://www.myalli.com/content/dam/cf-consumer-healthcare/my... I don't really want to think about the mechanism by which talc induces weight loss along with the active ingredient.
I think the same way. Seatbelts are made of nylon and I don’t really want to think about the mechanism which nylon makes a car move.
Apropos of anything else, J&J's handling of this has been despicable. Creating an entity specifically to pick up all of the related liabilities, picking up those liabilities and then (exact count may be wrong, but it's very close) literally filing for bankruptcy within the space of three days. The Texas two-step, as it's called. > In 2021, the company spun off its liabilities into a new entity called LTL Management u…
Having read the Matt Levine piece linked below ( https://archive.is/KcL2P ) I think that J&J did the right thing by attempting to use bankruptcy to organize payments. It was not avoiding liability at all. The court that dismissed the claim in general agreed with J&J's process, but said it was too early. Some key quote from Levine: > Juries in the US don’t like it when companies make products that kill people, and the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's listed as an inactive ingredient, so presumably it's just bulking up or binding together the pill in some way. Talc is approved as a food additive in the US and EU, it's probably fine. Considering the high profile nature of the baby powder lawsuit, I'd eat my boots if there aren't people examining other talc products looking for a new lawsuit opportunity. Besides, it's bound up in a pill instead of in a loose fi…
I'm not saying it's dangerous; I'm saying it's ironic that the obviously-talc-containing products were quickly obliterated and replaced by corn starch, while alli® (and perhaps others) get by, because even cardiologists can't figure out that they contain talc.
Since you’re referring to my parallel comment, I figured I’d let you know that your comment seemed to imply that talc was an active ingredient used for weight loss.
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Is a class action somehow impossible if they don't declare bankruptcy? Or they can't distribute money as easily as in a class action? The mechanics of this don't sound so absolutely necessary. Further, if your company produces products that kill or injure people, then why should we show any interest in maintaining that companies existence with odd legal hacks like this? Shouldn't they be disbanded, their assets sold,…
> Is a class action somehow impossible if they don't declare bankruptcy? Or they can't distribute money as easily as in a class action? The issue is that there might be multiple actions, and compensation might be used up byt the first one (eg, if the company was sent into bankruptcy by the first class action, then subsequent cases would be useless). This is a pretty reasonable argument IMHO. > Further, if your compan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having read the Matt Levine piece linked below ( https://archive.is/KcL2P ) I think that J&J did the right thing by attempting to use bankruptcy to organize payments. It was not avoiding liability at all. The court that dismissed the claim in general agreed with J&J's process, but said it was too early. Some key quote from Levine: > Juries in the US don’t like it when companies make products that kill people, and the…
Doesn't this mean that J&J can set the amount of damages to what they have to pay to what they think is fair? Imagine if the criminal justice system worked like that.
> the entire value of J&J’s consumer business was still on the line for those claims.
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How is the business getting off easy in this scenario. It's dissolving. What else can we do to it?
J&J isn't dissolving. It's still throwing off a billion dollars a month in shareholder dividends, freed from the shackles of any liability.
J&J is not "freed from the shackles of any liability", because it is still liable to its own subsidiary for the talc lawsuit claims, up to the full value of J&J itself (the parent company).
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For one thing, this approach allows J&J to determine their maximum liability by only spinning off a certain amount to the subsidiary. It seems more fair to allow any and all claimants to sue J&J, or join together for a class action lawsuit. If the liabilities outstrip the company's total worth they can then go for bankruptcy of the entire J&J business and split assets proportionately across all liabilities.
> this approach allows J&J to determine their maximum liability by only spinning off a certain amount to the subsidiary. This is not what they did. To quote Levine's piece: > the box where J&J put its talc claims — could draw at least $61.5 billion from J&J to pay off those claims. The point here, the bankruptcy court concluded, was not to keep J&J from having to pay talc claims; the entire value of J&J’s consumer bu…