Johnson & Johnson attempted to have a U.S. judge order Reuters to refrain from publishing a story based on what the healthcare giant claimed were confidential company documents about the healthcare giant’s legal maneuvers to fight lawsuits alleging that its Baby Powder caused cancer.
Johnson & Johnson was successful in getting the judge to order Reuters to refrain from publishing the story.
According to Johnson & Johnson, “the First Amendment does not provide a license to willfully violate the law.” The company made the statement late Thursday in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey, where a unit of the company had sought bankruptcy protection while defending the Baby Powder lawsuits.
In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press.
According to a report published on Friday by Reuters, Johnson & Johnson secretly launched “Project Plato” last year in order to shift liability from approximately 38,000 pending Baby Powder talc lawsuits to a newly created subsidiary, which was then scheduled to be placed into bankruptcy. This would allow J&J to reduce its financial exposure to lawsuits.
Following the publication of the story, Reuters petitioned U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan to dismiss J&J’s motion on the grounds that it was moot. Kaplan denied the petition.
J&J announced in a filing that it was withdrawing a request for an immediate hearing on the matter, but that it was “not prepared to agree” that its request for the documents was moot. The filing came less than an hour after Reuters submitted its letter to the court.
Following the publication of the story, J&J stated in a filing that it intends to continue discussions with Reuters and that it was “encouraged” that “publication of confidential documents” may no longer be imminent.
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According to attorneys for Reuters, which is a unit of Thomson Reuters, J&J’s request to block publication was “among the most extraordinary remedies a litigant can request under the law,” according to a court filing made on Friday. “Prior restraint of speech on a matter of public interest,” according to the news agency’s lawyers, was requested by J&J.
According to J&J, Reuters obtained documents that were previously protected from public disclosure by a court order from the Kaplan family. After receiving the documents, the company demanded that Reuters return them and refrain from publishing any information obtained from the documents.
A J&J spokesperson said Friday in a statement that the case should be heard in court – in a forum where both sides can present their cases in an appropriate setting – rather than being argued in the media.
“This is a complex matter that should be heard by the court – in a forum where both sides can present their cases in an appropriate setting – and not argued through the media.”
Reuters denied that it possesses confidential information, claiming in court papers that the confidentiality of one of the documents had been lifted in January and that the second document was not in the possession of the news organization at the time of the incident.
J&J’s (JNJ.N) LTL unit filed for bankruptcy in October in order to resolve claims that the company’s talc-based products contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma and ovarian cancer in people who used the products. click here to find out more
According to the company, J&J maintains that its consumer talc products are safe and have been independently verified to be asbestos-free.
The company has stated that it filed for bankruptcy protection for LTL in order to settle those claims rather than litigating them individually. According to the company, resolving these claims through the Chapter 11 restructuring process is a legitimate use of the restructuring process.
In their argument, the talc plaintiff committees contend that J&J should not be permitted to use bankruptcy to resolve the talc litigation and that, in doing so, it is depriving plaintiffs of their right to have their day in court.
