Although the Supreme Court on Monday passed on hearing the case of a woman who accuses Facebook of facilitating and benefiting from child sex trafficking, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the immunity afforded to online platforms should be revisited under the right circumstances. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case accusing Facebook of facilitating child sex trafficking. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) In a statement accompanying high court’s denial of certiorari to a Jane Doe from Texas who was raped and trafficked by a sexual predator she met on Facebook when she was 15, Thomas said that although the case was not appropriate for court review, Congress should revisit the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides

Casting aside Ethicon’s “broad-spectrum attack on the judgment,” the 7th US Circuit Court upheld a $20 million verdict to a woman who was permanently injured by the company’s Prolift pelvic mesh device. Ethicon appealed in Barbara Kaiser v. Johnson & Johnson and Ethicon, Inc., No. 18-2944. An Indiana state jury had awarded $35 million to Barbara Kaiser on March 8, 2018 for negligent design defect and negligent failure to warn about the dangers of the mesh. The trial judge reduced the verdict to $20 million. It was the latest in a long string of jury verdicts. Kaiser had the mesh implanted in January 2009. Afterwards she experienced severe pelvic pain, bladder spasms and pain during intercourse. Although she underwent revision surgery to remove the device,

Ten years into the nationwide litigation over talcum powder, Johnson & Johnson is bleeding billions of dollars in settlements, legal fees, jury verdicts, and stock valuation. The company faces 15,299 cases nationwide in federal court, but all of the action so far has been in state courts. The U.S. Justice Department started a criminal investigation in July 2019 into whether Johnson & Johnson lied to the public about the possible cancer risks of its talcum powder. A grand jury in Washington, DC, is examining documents related to what company officials knew about any carcinogens in their products. The FDA announced on October 18, 2019, that over 33,000 bottles of Johnson’s Baby Powder were voluntarily recalled after testing positive for asbestos. Johnson & Johnson voluntarily recalled

Among the recent documents unsealed in court indicates that in May 1974, an official at Johnson & Johnson’s Windsor mine in Vermont recommended “the use of citric acid in the depression of chrysotile asbestos” from talc extracted from the site. “The use of these systems is strongly urged by this writer to provide protection against what are currently considered to be materials presenting a severe health hazard and are potentially present in all talc ores in use at this time,” the mine’s director of research and development wrote then. See also “New Evidence of Johnson & Johnson Bad Conduct Moved LA Jury to Award $417 Million Talc Verdict”. Johnson & Johnson stock — up 6 percent for the year — plunged 11 percent on news of the report,