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Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

reuters.com

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Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#221

Post by kevinventullo »

themitigating wrote: post #115
kevinventullo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your heart of hearts, do you really believe that J&J wants to make things right and pay these claimants what they’re owed, or do you think J&J is trying to minimize what they pay out by any means necessary? Note that J&J shareholders likely interpret the latter as their fiduciary duty.

Here's the problem. Who? The CEO and eveyone near him is rich, they company going out of business won't affect them. I'm sure they'll be able to get high paying jobs. In fact the negative association with this case would have me wanting to move on

A large portion of the CEO’s wealth is almost certainly tied up in company equity, and this is true for the shareholders by definition. Anyway, it’s not about teaching them anything, it’s about influencing the risk/reward calculus of other companies that are considering skipping steps and releasing unsafe products.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#222

Post by carlivar »

autoexec wrote: post #143
nl wrote: post #20

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…

> The basic idea of bankruptcy is that if you have a company with $1,000 of assets and $2,000 of liabilities, you can’t pay back everyone everything you owe them. You could just pay back the first creditors who show up and ask for their money back, until the $1,000 is gone, and then give the remaining creditors zero, but that seems unfair I'm entirely unconvinced that J&J couldn't pay back everything they owe, to eve…

> I'm entirely unconvinced that J&J couldn't pay back everything they owe

How much is this? I thought we don't know yet since so much is still under litigation.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#223

Post by shkkmo »

scarface_74 wrote: post #163
autoexec wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic idea of bankruptcy is that if you have a company with $1,000 of assets and $2,000 of liabilities, you can’t pay back everyone everything you owe them. You could just pay back the first creditors who show up and ask for their money back, until the $1,000 is gone, and then give the remaining creditors zero, but that seems unfair I'm entirely unconvinced that J&J couldn't pay back everything they owe, to eve…

> I'm entirely unconvinced that J&J couldn't pay back everything they owe, to everyone they owe it to, without bankruptcy and the fact that they were able to avoid all of those individual lawsuits is already J&J getting off the hook unfairly and avoiding their full liability. The amount that can be awarded by a jury is uncapped, there is absolutely no way of knowing whether J&J could pay all claimants.

There won't be any amounts awarded by juries if J&J get their way and leave it all up to a single bankruptcy judge.

Once J&J has damages awarded that exceed what they cam pay, thay would the the appropriate time for the company as a whole to declare bankruptcy.

A good first step to make sure J&J can pay all their victims would be to stop paying dividends to shareholders in case they need that money for victims.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#224

Post by macinjosh »

The use of a bankruptcy court, to a layman like me, looks suspicious, even after reading all the comments explaining it. Is this not what class-action suits are for? Combining similar cases into one to save court resources? This seems like a backwards way to go about that which affords J&J lawyers more surface area from which to litigate about technicalities, loop-holes, etc.

My assumption is they determined this first $65 billion will be enough to make the problem go away. Claimants will get a big check, but not big enough to launch further litigation to get more out of the company.

IMO, this is solving a problem that does not exist. If one or two initial claimants were to clean out the whole company then subsequent claimants could sue them for their share, or the courts could step in and enforce a class-action.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#225

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

carbocation wrote: post #84
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't really want to think about the mechanism by which talc induces weight loss along with the active ingredient. 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.

> along with

I did not name Orlistat, I named the medication alli®. alli® contains talc. You can't obtain alli® without talc, AFAIK. Orlistat does not contain talc, but Orlistat is not alli®.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#226

Post by naasking »

boringg wrote: post #185
wiz21c wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then it may be easier to convince one judge than a dozen. Isn't it ?

Potentially but it's also a waste of our judicial system resources to have 12 identical cases going at the same time. However if you like paying for legal admin fees on both side its a great way to make sure lawyers get paid.

There's something to be said for making this as painful and costly as possible for J&J.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#227

Post by UncleMeat »

scott_w wrote: post #194
UncleMeat wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. There is zero chance that the corporate lawyers are doing this to ensure that the next people killed by J&J can collect. “We can’t pay out for these deaths because then we will be out of money to pay out for the other deaths.” This is only a compelling argument if J&J agrees to dissolve their entire company and work with the courts to distribute 100% of their wealth to aggrieved parties. Let’s see how much they…

The corporate lawyers aren’t the ones allowing this, the lawmakers are. Your follow up points don’t address my point at all.

I don't believe for even one second that this process is designed and executed for the legitimate protection of the aggrieved.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#228

Post by HDThoreaun »

iancarroll wrote: post #80
jjallen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think companies can just avoid all of their liabilities two days before something bad happens and protect all of their assets? Bankruptcy law is hundreds of years old and is designed to protect creditors actually. That’s why there is a separate court to handle things and involved independent outsiders and judges that oversee things. It works and is used every time there is a financial crisis and thousan…

It is a pretty well-documented strategy that has been done several times: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_two-step_bankruptcy Not sure why you are treating it as an absurd concept.

The texas two step is not used to skirt liabilities. Its point is to consolidate all the cases in one court to reduce lawyer headaches and ensure each claimant is paid fairly.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#229

Post by shkkmo »

ankit219 wrote: post #99
kevinventullo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why bother with the spin-off at all? Why isn’t J&J just declaring bankruptcy?

They weren't capping the total payouts in damages. The bankruptcy filing itself said that parent company would cover the cost to ensure everyone gets the money. Bankruptcy was a process to ensure every victim gets equal amount. The term for this process is misleading, and the mental image is very much of a company which is getting out of paying their victims. In this case, filing for bankruptcy created fairness among…

>In this case, filing for bankruptcy created fairness among victims, they did not have to be first or fifth to get the right damages, every victim was treated equal.

It creates fairness among victims by removing their rights to seek higher damages via their own court cases.

This "fairness" is only needed if the total amount of judgements exceeds what J&J can pay. In which case it is J&J which should be declaring bankruptcy, but that would block their ability to keep paying dividends to shareholders.

> The only reason the court quashed it was because it wanted J&J to fight the individual or class action lawsuits

Exactly. The judge saw through skeezy J&J attempt to use a sham bankruptcy to avoid the large payouts that can come from jury trials.

Edit: Seriously, how can any person believe that J&J are doing this to make sure there is money to "fairly" pay all the victims while J&J is still paying some of the money that might be needed to pay victims as dividends to their shareholders. It is pretty darn extremely clear the J&J's primary goal is to reduce payouts and maximize shareholder value

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#230

Post by HDThoreaun »

FireBeyond wrote: post #74
ozzydave wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is spinning this as an attempt by J&J to escape paying out the liability which it wasn’t - Matt Levine (of course!) explains the details here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-31/matt-l...

They still are. Just indirectly. They set the amount that they were willing to fund the subsidiary to the tune of. Must be nice, being able to say "Well, we'll give LTL $X and that can be used for settlements" while still throwing off nearly $X a year in profits, and 25% of X in shareholder dividends alone. Why should a company be allowed to set and determine how much liability it needs to pay?

This is the opposite of what happened. The court rejected their first two step attempt for not having a high enough payout and forced the subsidiary to have a 61.5 billion dollar payout maximum.
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