J&J settles talc lawsuits for $5.5B, closing decade-long legal battle

For more than a decade, tens of thousands of people who believed a familiar household product had harmed them faced one of the world's most powerful healthcare companies in court. On Monday, Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $5.5 billion to settle approximately 69,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based baby powder caused ovarian cancer — a landmark resolution that closes most, but not all, of the company's exposure to this chapter of product liability history. The settlement arrives not as an admission of fault, but as a corporate calculation that closure, however costly, serves the future better