Johnson & Johnson fined $417 million in talc cancer suit

Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was ordered by a

Los Angeles

jury to pay $417 million to a 62-year-old woman who blamed her ovarian cancer on the company's talc, in the first California trial over the product.

The jury found the parent company and its consumer-products unit liable on Monday for failing to warn a woman over the alleged risk of the

baby powder

. The verdict includes $347 million in punitive damages. J&J, which faces 5,500 claims in US courts, has lost four previous jury verdicts in St Louis for a total of $300 million.

The trial in Los Angeles was the first before a state jury outside Missouri, where the company lost four out of five trials over the past two years and got hit with verdicts as high as $110 million. J&J is appealing the verdicts and in Ju ne succeeded in halting a trial in St Louis after the US Supreme Court made it more difficult for out-of-state plaintiffs to join lawsuits in state courts that are deemed favourable to their claims.

The company will appeal, said spokeswoman Carol Goodrich. “We are guided by the science, which supports the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder,'' she said. “We are preparing for additional trials in the US and we will continue to defend the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder.“

J&J, the world's largest healthcare company , is accused of ignoring studies linking its baby powder and 'Shower to Shower' talc products to ovarian cancer and failing to warn customers about the risk.

Mark Robinson, a lawyer for plaintiff

Eva Echeverria

, said outside the courtroom that J&J should start warning women immediately about the risks of its talcum powder.

“J&J needs to see they not only have verdicts against them in St Louis, they now also have them in Los Angeles,“ Robinson said. “There's a problem all over the country with women using talcum powder on daily basis for 10, 20, 30, 40 years.“

Echeverria started using J&J's talc powder products when she was 11. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007. The $417-million verdict on Monday is the third-largest jury award in the US so far in 2017.