R. Allen Smith of The Smith Firm (left) and James Smith of Blank Rome. (Courtesy photos)

Following three weeks of trial, lawyers battling over the role Johnson's Baby Powder may have played in a woman's death from ovarian cancer spent four hours Thursday rehashing expert testimony and whether the company had any reason to think its talc-based product posed a health risk. 

"This is a big case with big issues that affect thousands of people, and about Johnson & Johnson protecting its corporate image," said lead plaintiffs attorney R. Allen Smith, representing the granddaughter and estate of Diane Brower, who died in 2016. Brower purportedly used the powder on her vaginal area for more than 15 years before stopping around 1980.

Smith said the company's reluctance to change a product it began marketing in the 1880s was the only reason the trial had to be held.

"We don't need to be here," he said, arguing that J&J knew decades ago that talc was suspected of being toxic to female reproductive organs and had even patented an cornstarch-based alternative in 1952.

"Talc is an antiquated product" that offers no benefit to the women who use it, but exposes them to great harm, he said. Smith cited statistics showing that about 24,000 women a year are diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the United States, and 11,000 a year die from the "insidious" disease.

Brower's case is the first to go to trial in Georgia and is among an estimated 14,600 cases nationally that contend Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that its talcum powder products increased cancer risk in women but withheld that information and continued to market the product for hygienic use. Several cases that have gone to trial have seen their verdicts tossed out for insufficient evidence. That includes a $417 million verdict in Los Angeles and a $72 million verdict in Missouri.

Smith said internal documents from the company showed that it knew talc fibers had been linked to adhesions and granulomas in women's perineal regions.

"None of that information has ever been conveyed to the consumer," said Smith, asserting that those documents alone were enough to support a verdict holding J&J responsible for failing to warn women like Brower.

"Forget the experts," said Smith. "My experts are paid, their experts are paid … let's look at their internal documents before there was ever any litigation."

"Johnson & Johnson hasn't brought anyone in here to say these documents aren't theirs; nobody has come in and said 'that's incorrect,'" Smith said.

Nonetheless, he proceeded to detail the findings of his team of experts, which he said showed that multiple studies found talc fibers could "migrate" from a woman's outer vagina, through her uterus and into her ovaries—the same type of fibers he said were found in Brower's tissue samples after her death.

And many studies also showed that such fibers caused irritation and were potentially carcinogenic, as are other adulterants found in the baby powder, he said.

"Johnson & Johnson has been responsible for a lot of death and destruction," said Smith of Ridgeland, Mississippi's Smith Law Firm, whose team includes Ted Meadows and Leigh O'Dell of Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin Portis & Miles in Montgomery and Sharon Zinns and Robert Register of the Atlanta office.

Smith asked the jury to award more than $700,000 in lost wages and $1.3 million in medical bills, plus noneconomic damages for the 20 years he said she should have lived if not felled by cancer. 

"Whether that's worth $500,000 a year, $1 million a year—I'll leave that up to you," he said. The jury should also award her estate an amount to compensate "for all her pain and suffering," Smith added.

Lead defense attorney James Smith of Blank Rome in Philadelphia retorted that, after three weeks of trial, there was no evidence the perineal application of talc causes ovarian cancer. 

"All of us hate cancer," but the verdict "must be based on evidence, and the evidence must be based on science," said Smith, whose team includes Sidley Austin's Debra Pole and Eric Schwartz; Shook Hardy's Mark Hegarty; and Thompson Hine's Ileana Martinez and Leslie Suson.

None of the testimony or evidence proved that talc can migrate from a woman's vagina to her ovaries, he said, and there was no plausible link between talc and ovarian cancer at all, let alone that which killed Brower.

Smith blasted the plaintiffs' experts for cherry-picking research and presenting "junk science," singling out key expert James Barter, an gynecologist-oncologist from Rockville, Maryland, for making unsupported claims and changing his testimony when confronted with contradictory facts.

"When the lawyers for the plaintiffs asked him a question, he always agreed," said Smith. "When I asked him a question, he didn't have an answer."

"He was argumentative, unfocused. … Dr. Barter just makes it up," Smith said.

Smith said the assertion that Johnson & Johnson should have warned the public about supposed risks made no sense, because there was nothing to warn about.

"There must be some known or foreseeable danger," he said. 

The internal letters cited by the plaintiffs were written decades ago and proved nothing, Smith added.

"You can't turn your backs on science for the sake of five or six documents, most of them over 50 years old."

Delivering the final plaintiffs' argument, O'Dell said the case was about "what J&J knew and when they knew it."

"This is about a woman's right to know so she can make an informed choice," said O'Dell, while vital information was "locked in a J&J filing cabinet."