Professor Howard Erichson was interviewed by Bloomberg about Missouri Court of Appeals recently throwing out a $72 million award to a nonresident plaintiff who claimed that Johnson & Johnson talcum powder caused her ovarian cancer.
[W]hat the court said essentially is, that plaintiffs have to bring a lawsuit either in the defendant’s home state or in a state that the claim rose out of.
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[I]n the Missouri talc case, you’ve got an Alabama woman who had sued Johnson and Johnson, a New Jersey company in Missouri state court and she was able to do that initially because she joined her case with a couple of Missouri plaintiffs as well as lots of other plaintiffs from around the country. Based on this new Supreme Court ruling, what the Missouri Appellate Court had to say is, well, the Missouri State Court simply doesn’t have the power to render a decision in this case between an Alabama plaintiff and a New Jersey company, given that it’s not the defendant’s home state and it’s not a state that the claim rose out of.
