TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) - Johnson & Johnson has renewed its legal assault on a doctor who helped kickstart litigation over talcum powder by publishing a study that falsely claimed 33 cancer patients had no exposure to asbestos other than talc.
Citing new information it obtained after years of courtroom wrangling, J&J said at least half the subjects cited by Dr. Jacqueline Moline had alternative exposures to asbestos and many of them disclosed it in lawsuits against the manufacturers of other products.
In some cases, Dr. Moline had supplied medical opinions for their attorneys that contradicted her statement in the journal article that she excluded from the study anyone with prior exposure to asbestos.
Johnson & Johnson first sued Moline in 2022, claiming her 2019 article was “junk science” produced to help lawyers bring mass tort claims over J&J's Baby Powder. A federal judge in New Jersey dismissed that lawsuit in 2024, saying J&J had failed to show Dr. Moline made knowing misstatements, as opposed to expressing her medical opinion.
At that point, J&J knew the identities of only six of the 33 subjects in the 2019 paper. Dr. Moline and her employer, Northwell Health, had fought diligently in court to keep the remaining subjects anonymous.
In a motion to renew the litigation, J&J said a New York court finally ordered Moline to turn over the rest of the names in early April. The company then identified more than 15 study subjects who had told stories that contradicted Dr. Moline’s claim they had no other exposure to asbestos.
They included Valeria Dalis, who collected $28,000 from the Johns Manville asbestos trust; Betty Bell, who filed workers’ compensation claims over exposure to asbestos in textile mills; and Helene Kohr, whose medical report, compiled by Dr. Moline, stated she smoked cigarettes with asbestos filters.
“There has to be some point where the falsity of even of a journal article is so flagrant that a trade libel claim is viable,” the company said in its April 29 filing with a federal court in New Jersey. “Dr. Moline’s article is far across that line.”
The new evidence justifies reviving the lawsuit against Dr. Moline, said J&J. It filed the motion in the name of its Pecos River unit, which was formed in an ill-fated attempt to settle talc litigation in bankruptcy court. After that plan was rejected, J&J vowed renew its efforts defending its name in civil cases, and the new Moline filing reflects that.
Northwell Health, where Dr. Moline is employed as an occupational health specialist, didn’t respond to a request for comment. In the past, it has declined comment on pending litigation.
Johnson & Johnson may feel more confident since a federal judge in Virginia allowed a similar lawsuit to proceed against three more doctors who published an article claiming 75 subjects developed cancer after being exposed to talc. Drs. Theresa Emory, John Maddox, and Richard Kradin, described by the judge as “prolific plaintiff-side expert witnesses,” published the follow-up to Dr. Moline’s study in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine 2020.
J&J blamed it for a sharp decline in Johnson’s Baby Powder sales and its ultimate decision to remove the product from the U.S. market.
At least six of the anonymous subjects of that survey had disclosed prior asbestos exposures and one of them was included in Dr. Moline’s study, J&J said. That case, like the one against Dr. Moline, claims the article fraudulently damaged J&J’s business and cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees defending itself against meritless claims.
Plaintiff lawyers began pressing talc lawsuits at the same time as they were running out of traditional plaintiffs who could claim workplace exposure to industrial asbestos. They have paid millions of dollars to experts like Dr. Moline and William Longo to provide opinions that cosmetic talc contains asbestos fibers and can cause cancers including mesothelioma, a deadly cancer of the abdominal lining.
In Longo’s case, that conclusion required a 180-degree shift from his earlier opinion, when his clients were suing asbestos manufacturers, that the idea of asbestos in talc was an “urban legend.” Longo was later forced to acknowledge the shift and admit his laboratory had found no asbestos in talc until he was hired to provide opinions in talc lawsuits.
Johnson & Johnson says its talc contained no asbestos and Longo and other experts are confusing jurors by using multiple definitions to identify what they call asbestos fibers.