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A Pennsylvania jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $250,000 to the family of a woman who said the company's talc-based baby powder caused her ovarian cancer.

The verdict adds to the company's ongoing legal troubles over its talc products, which have been the subject of thousands of lawsuits across the country.

The decision came Friday in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. Jurors awarded $50,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages to the family of Gayle Emerson, a Pennsylvania woman who died in 2019 at age 68, NY Post reported.

Emerson sued in 2019, claiming she had used Johnson's baby powder from 1969 until 2017.

According to court records, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2017, two years before filing her lawsuit.

She died six months after suing. Her son and daughter continued the case on her behalf after her death from metastatic ovarian cancer.

Chris Tisi, an attorney involved in nationwide talc litigation against Johnson & Johnson, said the jury sided with the family's claim that the company knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but did not warn consumers.

Johnson & Johnson has long denied those claims. The company has said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos, and do not cause cancer.

In 2020, it stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the United States and switched to a cornstarch-based product.

Johnson & Johnson Faces Thousands of Talc Lawsuits

According to Reuters, the case is one of more than 67,000 lawsuits filed in state and federal courts alleging that Johnson & Johnson's talc products contained asbestos and caused ovarian cancer or other cancers.

Most of the claims involve ovarian cancer. A smaller number allege that talc caused mesothelioma, a rare and deadly cancer.

The company has tried three times to resolve the lawsuits through bankruptcy proceedings, but federal courts rejected those efforts, most recently in April last year. Those bankruptcy attempts had paused many ovarian cancer trials.

Since that pause ended, new trials have moved forward. In December, a California jury awarded $40 million to two women in a separate ovarian cancer case. Several more state court trials are scheduled in the coming months.

There has not yet been a federal trial in the consolidated cases. However, a federal magistrate judge ruled in January that plaintiffs may present expert testimony linking baby powder use to ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson has said it plans to appeal that ruling.

Before its bankruptcy attempts, the company had mixed results in talc trials, including verdicts reaching as high as $4.69 billion.

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