Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight
South Dakota will collect $3.6 million from Johnson & Johnson to settle allegations that the company marketed unsafe talc-based baby powder products to consumers.
The settlement is part of a $700 million agreement with 43 attorneys general over claims that Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based products increase the risk of ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, one of the 43, announced the news in a press release Tuesday.
“This lawsuit is about safety and protecting babies and children,” Jackley said in a statement.
South Dakota’s share of the money, set to be paid in four installments, will go to help fund the operations of the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division. That division, which handles consumer complaints for state residents, has five and a half investigators, according to Jackley spokesman Tony Mangan. The division has launched 15 formal investigations since last July, he said, and fielded about 1,700 complaints in 2023.
The settlement, as well as the yearslong move away from talc as a baby powder ingredient, has its roots in South Dakota.
In 2013, a federal jury in Sioux Falls found that resident Deane Berg’s multi-decade use of Johnson & Johnson products that contained talcum contributed to her ovarian cancer in 2006. She sued in 2009. Berg’s case was the first in the U.S. to establish a link between talc and cancer in a jury trial, but the jury did not award her damages.
Berg said she learned of the possible link from a Sanford USD Medical Center brochure.
A scan of Berg’s cancer tissue, conducted years later as part of the evidence gathering for the lawsuit, showed talcum powder in her left ovary. The company contended that Berg never proved a link, arguing the tissue sample was probably contaminated at the hospital.
Studies dating as far back as 1971 have found an association between talc and cancer risk.
In 2016, a Missouri jury sided with the family of a woman who died from ovarian cancer alleging that Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based body powders caused the illness. The jury awarded the family $72 million, the first monetary award in a case involving the already long-suspected link between talc and ovarian cancer.
As part of the settlement announced Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson will cease manufacturing and selling its talc-based products in the U.S. In addition to the cancer risk allegations, the lawsuit claimed the company targeted African American and Hispanic women in its marketing to counter declining sales.
The company admitted no wrongdoing but stopped selling the products as investigations began.