J&J offers $5.5bn settlement in lawsuits claiming talc link to cancer - Al Jazeera

What the report says

Al Jazeera, citing Reuters, reported that Johnson & Johnson has agreed to a $5.5bn proposal to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits in the United States alleging that its former talc-based baby powder was linked to ovarian cancer. The company announced the deal on Monday, July 28, 2026, saying it would cover about 69,000 federal and state court cases, which it described as 99.75 percent of its pending US talc-related claims.

The settlement is not yet final. According to the report, it requires approval from 95 percent of the claimants involved in the relevant state or federal court proceedings. J&J’s litigation head, Erik Haas, said the agreement would allow the company to move on from the dispute, while lawyers for plaintiffs characterized it as a favorable outcome after years of litigation. J&J continues to deny that talc causes cancer.

The litigation concerns talc, a mineral long used in cosmetics and baby products, whose use has declined amid health concerns. Al Jazeera noted that the World Health Organization classified talc in 2024 as probably carcinogenic to humans. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020 and ended sales worldwide in 2023.

The report also placed the settlement in a broader legal context. A 2016 jury award against J&J in an ovarian cancer case was later overturned, but similar claims expanded in US courts. The proposed US agreement does not include a separate UK product-liability case involving more than 7,000 potential claimants, filed in October 2025 and now before the UK High Court; J&J denies those allegations as well.