A Los Angeles jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966 million to the family of Mae Moore, an 88-year-old California woman who died from mesothelioma in 2021. The verdict, which came late Monday, found the drug company responsible for Moore’s death after her family said the company’s talc-based baby powder products had asbestos fibers that caused her rare cancer. The jury gave $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages. Moore’s family filed the lawsuit in 2021, the same year she died. Court filings show that Moore had used Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder and Shower-to-Shower powder for almost 80 years. Mesothelioma is a deadly cancer that has been directly connected to asbestos exposure. The jury spent two days thinking about the case before they all agreed that Johnson & Johnson acted with malice or oppression in Moore’s case. According to CNN, lawyers representing Moore’s family said they hope the verdict would make the company take responsibility. Trey Branham, one of the lawyers, said his team is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths.” Another lawyer, Danny Kraft, said that “Mae should not have had to suffer because of a product she trusted for use on herself and her children.” This verdict is the largest award ever given against Johnson & Johnson in a single mesothelioma case about its talc products. Johnson & Johnson plans to appeal the verdict immediately Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said the company would appeal, calling the verdict “egregious and unconstitutional.” Haas criticized the evidence shown at trial, saying that “the plaintiff lawyers in this Moore case based their arguments on junk science that never should have been presented to the jury.” He said that decades of studies show the company’s baby powder is safe, does not have asbestos, and does not cause cancer. $966M VERDICT: JOHNSON & JOHNSON IS LIABLE FOR CANCER DEATHA California jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $966M after finding its talc baby powder caused an 88-year-old woman’s fatal mesothelioma.That’s $16M in damages, and a jaw-dropping $950M in punitive punishment.… pic.twitter.com/aTZpRLrWHe— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 9, 2025 The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the United States in 2020, switching to a cornstarch formula instead. By 2023, Johnson & Johnson had stopped talc-based baby powder sales around the world. Even with this change, the company still faces legal problems. More than 67,000 people have filed lawsuits saying they got cancer after using the company’s baby powder and other talc products. Most cases are about ovarian cancer claims, while mesothelioma cases are a smaller group. Johnson & Johnson has tried to solve the legal cases through bankruptcy proceedings three times, but federal courts said no each time. The mesothelioma lawsuits were not part of the most recent bankruptcy settlement attempt. Without a nationwide settlement deal, many mesothelioma cases have gone to trial in state courts. The company has won some recent trials, including a case last week in South Carolina where a jury found Johnson & Johnson not responsible. But the company has also faced several big verdicts in the past year, though the Moore case is among the largest. The verdict could be reduced on appeal, as the U.S. Supreme Court has said that punitive damages should usually not be more than nine times the compensatory damages given.