such an ivory tower legal world moment…
“look at our best attorney and how completely she fucked over all those people with cancer… MUCH WOW!! SUCH SKILL”
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lots of articles on this are paywalled but here’s an excerpt. the reason her litigation was considered so highly was because … the plaintiffs were too sympathetic.
In terms of level of difficulty, what Allison Brown of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom did at closing arguments for Johnson & Johnson in Belleville, Illinois, in July 2021 was off the charts.
For one, she and her co-lead counsel, Michael Brown of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, faced a sympathetic opponent. The family of a woman who died in 2016 claimed her use of Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder caused a rare form of ovarian cancer. The heirs were seeking $50 million.
I try to tell anyone who will listen, these mega firms are straight up evil though some are worse than others. Skadden, Jones Day and Kirkland are among the worst. Michael Clayton was a documentary.
i also think this is just straight up awful use of money. the lawyers and the bad publicity easily cost more than $50m. but hey when you can spend 8 or 9 figures to spike the ball on someone’s mother’s grave, the chances corporations go for it are probably like six nines
The money would have been billions given other cases. I’ve never seen evidence that baby power did or did not cause the cancer or J&J had reason to know that it might. Seems an odd things to discover after 100 years of baby powder usage. I know the plaintiff’s lawyers don’t care, and that they will seek juries who care more about the poor victim than whether the claim is based in reality. Is the world a better place now that no one can sell baby powder for fear of lawsuits? That depends how harmful it is, which (again) I have no idea.
Big law firms can do some sketchy things for sketchy clients, but if the causation evidence is bad I’d be more than happy to work for J&J and feel righteous doing so.
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Well, separate from this attorney winning “lawyer of the year,” it’s fucking disgraceful the company is allowed to make a mockery of the bankruptcy code to insulate itself from liability.
Oh let’s be very clear, the ambulance chasing errrr plaintiffs bar is full of complete scumbags too. The whole profession is completely broken.
It depends what you mean by “ripping off.” On one hand, in a lot of these cases, the plaintiffs can’t afford to front the costs and expense of litigation, so you probably need a pretty big firm with deep pockets that can essentially finance the suit until they eventually get paid their contingency fee (if the win). So, having big plaintiffs firms are probably necessary in most big, complex litigation against wealthy defendants.
Otoh, the contingency fee is often a pretty big % of the settlement, and can lead to some absurd results where the attorneys get millions while the actual plaintiffs get a very small amount.
These aren’t real law firms, they’re loose configurations of relatively independent attorneys, most of whom are quite bad.
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These aren’t complex cases. Most of them are paint by numbers. All they want is a dead or crippled person. Most of the time the contingency fee will be 45%, plus whatever cost there is in experts and such. Most will try to negotiate the case for the insurance cap, particularly if it’s a lost leg or something, but there are some cases (young high earner with serious permanent injury) where they blow through the caps. Maybe they win $5m at trial, and they’ll take half.
The plaintiffs bar tends to be feast or famine. Mostly famine, but my sense is that “top” (or lucky/good at marketing) plaintiffs lawyers make more than most biglaw partners.
Complex tort class actions are a lot more complex. Probably only a few firms handle those well, but it can be a challenging area with a lot of risk. Think oxycotin case. Those firms do a lot of work before ever taking a case.
In cases like asbestos, there’s generally a pile of money set aside by a prior court decision/settlement, and the law firm’s job is signing up victims and filling out the paperwork correctly.
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the penalty did turn out to be billions, later reduced. the responsibility was on j&j to stop using a carcinogen according to available science. which they eventually did … in the us of a, but not elsewhere.
it’s almost the same corporate coverip as every other polluting or dangerous industry, except this one came with a product that included ’baby’ in its name, and rhe product literally wasn’t the entire business. they obviously sold every other product in a typical household bathroom. it was arguably more reckless for them to jeopardize the entirety of their revenues for a line of cancer powder.
In some cases, They mine for action, not actual injury. Then they seek plaintiffs. There are literally search algorithms specifically designed for this. Perversion of the system imo. These things where you get a card in the mail and get free security software or whatever, the law firm makes big coin.
The talc thing feels like junk science to me, though I have not looked into at all. The silicone implants data turned about to be fraudulent. Didn’t change the judgements. Since Dow was one of my corporate owners at one point it impacted business decisions that our polymer would not be used inside bodies even though it’s a great material for the job.
I was going to post something like this and wait for the ensuing flames. I’ll let you take the heat for this one.
I’m with Simp. I really don’t think it’s that clear cut. Studies on this question specifically related to ovarian cancer and lung cancer were mixed. And the evidence that it causes these cancers is pretty weak in my opinion.
Also there is the issue of whether the talc was asbestos-free or not. But its not even clear that the talc with the minuscule amounts of asbestos caused cancer and it’s far less clear that asbestos-free talc causes any sort of cancer.
Here’s a link to the American Cancer Society page with a summary of the issue. I’d imagine they would be neutral and just interested in the truth, but I guess it’s possible J & J gives them a shitton of money. I haven’t really done a deep dive on that issue yet.
45% seems high. And plus expenses? I remember talking about this issue with a law bro once and he said that there was some legal ethics convention that prevented attorneys from taking over 1/3 for a contingency fee. Am I just remembering it wrong?
Of course, it seemed completely arbitrary. Why would 30% be ethical and 35% not be? Like so many legal things it seems like Calvinball. Yet he seemed super serious about it.
good news everybody. asbestos, while being a carcinogen, is not established to directly cause ovarian cancer. you can continue to use it in powder form.
I think it may vary by state.
But keep in mind it’s 35% plus all expenses. Which can include whatever the scumbag PI lawyer says the expenses are, like first class travel, fine dining, car service, whatever the fuck they want.
I know several of these guys and they’re just straight up scumbags. They buy scummy local tv ads and billboards or whatever, then file an insane volume of claims that are either a) meritless and settled for less than the insurance company’s cost to defend or b) instantly settled for the policy limit.
The class action world is admittedly more complex but no more ethical. See, e.g.:
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Well, you can’t actually, as I believe all talc containing baby powder is now asbestos-free.
To be more clear, contemporary talcum powder is free from detectable asbestos. But it isn’t sold either in the US. Does it have undetectable amounts of asbestos? Probably, but who knows, since it’s undetectable.
Nevertheless, such products are legal for sale in a lot of the rest of the world. I guess the rest of the world just doesn’t give a fuck about the health of their citizens. Or maybe they don’t think that modern talc-containing baby powder causes cancer. It’s probably one of those things.
That would totally be in the Calvinball spirit of the whole thing. However this lawbro does practice in the same state as @simplicitus , so it’s still a discrepancy. I absolutely could be remember it wrong, though.
you realize that’s not why J&J was found to be liable right? at trial it was found that over decades of testing the products for asbestos, j&j intentionally rigged the tests to make asbestos undetectable, and obscured asbestos findings in its reports. it’s weird how a product might become popular, but further studies could change how we should use it. it is on the pharmaceutical company to keep up with the research and inform the customers who might be using the product thousands of times during their lifetime
Rachel Lanier, an associate attorney at the Lanier firm and member of the talc trial team, told Healthline that based on a thorough review of the scientific and medical literature, including dozens of studies going back to at least 1960, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has concluded that asbestos causes ovarian cancer.
“The FDA has said that it would be unacceptable for asbestos to be in talc because asbestos is a known carcinogen, but the FDA has to rely on companies, including J&J, to self-regulate and provide them with data and information,” she said.
In 2016, she continued, “J&J told the FDA there has never been asbestos in J&J talcum powder and there never will be. This is simply false and the jury in this case saw dozens of documents that proved it. J&J’s own hired expert, Dr. Matthew Sanchez, testified in this case under oath that he had found asbestos in J&J talc.”
also appears to be incorrect reasoning. cancer detection rates around the world vary widely, and few places have an oversight arm as big as the FDA. still j&j did finally decide to stop selling it everywhere … when their stock runs out.