Houston Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez last fall asked the lawyers representing tens of thousands of women suing pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson for making and selling baby powder that they claim caused their ovarian and other gynecological cancers to trust him to give them a fair trial.
The trial lawyers had doubts, noting that the Houston bankruptcy courts are renowned for favoring big corporate debtors such as J&J and that the judge himself spent his career at a large corporate law firm representing companies just like J&J.
Those same trial lawyers are now singing the praises of Judge Lopez, who late Monday rejected J&J’s third attempt to use the federal bankruptcy courts to rid itself of 90,000 cases filed across the country by women in what the judge described as “one of the largest mass tort settlements in history.”
In a 57-page opinion, Judge Lopez said J&J’s efforts to create a separate subsidiary in Texas called Red River Talc for the sole purpose of funding a $9 billion resolution of its talc powder cancer litigation through the bankruptcy process needed to be dismissed due to multiple flaws in the handling of the case.
“In the end, based on the court’s on-the-spot evaluation, the prepetition voting and solicitation issues, the denial of plan confirmation, and the unique nature of this divisional merger case, there is cause to dismiss this case,” the judge wrote. “There is not any one individual factor that requires this result. It is all of them together that require the Court to dismiss this case.”
Lawyers representing tens of thousands of women praised the court’s decision.
“This decision affirms what we have argued all along — J&J’s bankruptcy strategy was nothing more than a bad-faith maneuver to avoid full accountability,” said Andy Birchfield of the Beasley Allen Law Firm. “With this ruling, we are now moving forward without delay to trial, where our clients will finally have the chance to present their cases before a jury and obtain the justice they deserve.”
Dallas trial lawyer Trey Branham, who has more than 100 cases currently against J&J, said that the judge recognized that the agreement was unfair to the women who want their day in court and unfairly denied rights to women who will discover in the future that they have cancer from J&J’s baby powder.
“J&J wanted to force this agreement on our clients but these victims have the right to say no and they have a right to have their cases heard by a jury,” Branham said. “I hope J&J will do the right thing and make a legitimate effort to resolve these cases. J&J used this bankruptcy process to bully our clients into a resolution and the judge rightfully said no,” Branham said.
Lawyers for J&J did not respond to requests for comments about whether they will appeal Judge Lopez’s ruling.
Monday’s ruling impacts 2,558 cases filed by women in Texas, including 465 in the DFW area, according to court records.
Judge Lopez conducted a two-week trial at the end of February.
The evidence showed that J&J and a subsidiary predecessor to Red River started soliciting votes on a prepackaged Chapter 11 plan in June 2024, in which the company reached out to the more than 90,000 claimants with ovarian and other gynecological cancer claims. J&J told the women and their lawyers that if 75 percent or more of them supported the settlement proposal — creating a $9 billion fund to pay the women’s claims — J&J would form the Red River subsidiary and start the Chapter 11 process.
In its original bankruptcy petition filed in September in the Southern District of Texas, J&J’s lawyers — led by Jones Day partner Greg Gordon of Dallas and Porter Hedges partner John Higgins of Houston — claimed that they had about 83 percent voting support of the women with the claims.
“Red River claims the proposed payments are twice as much as claimants will ever receive in the tort system,” Judge Lopez wrote in his opinion. “The litigation claims are about whether talc-based products like Johnson’s Baby Powder contained asbestos and, if so, whether that asbestos caused women to develop cancer. J&J parties maintain that there was never asbestos in their products and there is no proven causal link between claimants’ cancers and the products.”
Judge Lopez rejected the argument by plaintiffs that J&J’s efforts were in bad faith.
“Resolving mass tort claims in bankruptcy is a valid bankruptcy purpose,” the judge wrote. “There is an incentive for plaintiffs’ firms and their clients to participate in the bankruptcy process. Bankruptcy plans may offer a cash payment to clients sooner than waiting for a trial through the tort system.”
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“There are only about ten J&J talc-related trials a year. And with about 90,000 current claims, even if some cases are consolidated, one can do the math and see that claimants may die before ever having juries decide their cases,” Judge Lopez wrote. “And litigating talc-related claims against J&J in the tort system comes with risk because the odds have not been historically in their favor. Even some favorable verdicts have been overturned on appeal. Yet some plaintiffs’ lawyers remain confident in the tort system and want to continue litigating cases. They point out that mass tort cases historically settle too.”
A key dispute in the litigation focused on the claim by the Beasley Allen Law Firm that J&J wrongly switched more than 11,000 votes from being against the plan to being in favor of it in a secret agreement with another plaintiff’s law firm acting as co-counsel for those same 11,000 women.
“There are other material issues with the solicitation and voting processes that were caused by J&J and Red River,” the judge ruled. “J&J and Red River unnecessarily rushed the solicitation process at the cost of obtaining actual votes from creditors. J&J and Red River knew that [Texas trial lawyer Mikal] Watts only had a week to obtain the votes of his 17,000 clients and they did not grant him an extension when asked.”
Judge Lopez wrote that “some of the issues with the voting process were inadvertent mistakes.”
“Any mistakes were not intentional,” the judge ruled. “There was no evidence of collusion or other improper behavior. But the substantive prepetition solicitation and voting issues are troubling.”
“The prepetition voting and solicitation irregularities, including the unreasonably short voting time for thousands of creditors, was all done to get to 75 percent at any cost,” Judge Lopez wrote. “There is also not any present likelihood of rehabilitation of Red River and creditors have been stayed from litigating in the tort system during the pendency of three bankruptcy cases. Appointment of a trustee or conversion does not make sense in this case. And there are no unusual circumstances establishing that dismissal is not in the best interests of creditors and the estate.”
“While the Court’s decision is not an easy one, it is the right one.”
In a statement to The Texas Lawbook, Birchfield emphasized that his team will push for expedited proceedings to ensure that affected women, many of whom have been waiting for years, do not face further delays.
“We recognize that many women and their families did support the plan and the finality it promised. We want them to know that everything possible will be pursued to assure that J&J will finally recognize its responsibility and engage in fair settlement discussions,” Birchfield said. “When J&J is ready to get serious about justly compensating all women with talc-related ovarian cancer, we’ll be there to meet them.”
The case is In re Red River Talc, Southern District of Texas, No. 24-90505.