My friend Jim Copland has a great op-ed in today's WSJ on how the trial lawyers killed off Johnson & Johnson baby powder using a combination of junk science and litigation hotspots with gullible anti-business jurors.
In other developed countries, regulators would apply the best science and essentially end the matter. But not in the U.S., where claims that a product causes an injury are typically matters of state law. An FDA determination that a product is safe doesn’t usually preclude litigation alleging otherwise. ...
Asbestos lawyers have Johnson & Johnson as their latest deep-pocketed corporate defendant. And a necessary one too, as other lawsuits bankrupted all the actual asbestos manufacturers long ago.
