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Cancer Victims’ Lawyers Vow to Fight J&J Proposed Settlement

Attorneys who have led the charge in litigating cancer claims against Johnson & Johnson denounced the company’s deal with talc claimants as a sham and disgrace to many people who say J&J’s products gave them cancer.

J&J on Tuesday announced a $8.9 billion agreement with talc claimants as it placed subsidiary LTL Management LLC into bankruptcy for the second time. The proposed deal would compensate people who say J&J’s talc-based powders caused cancer, the company said.

The deal, which would pay claimants over the course of 25 years, would bring about a global resolution to the legal saga, J&J said. But many of the firms that have litigated against J&J on behalf of cancer victims for years, representing tens of thousands of claimants, say they were intentionally left out of the settlement. The proposal, they say, offers victims far less than they deserve.

“I strongly believe that the law firms that understand the case, the seriousness of the injury, the costs to the claimants in medical care, couldn’t possibly support something like this,” said Michelle Parfitt, a partner at Ashcraft & Gerel who as co-head of the talc litigation steering committee has helped oversee more than 40,000 claims during multidistrict

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