The family of Mae Moore, a California resident who died at age 88 in 2021, sued the company the same year, claiming that J&J’s talc baby powder products contained asbestos fibers that caused her rare cancer. The jury late on Monday ordered J&J to pay $16 million in compensatory damages and $950 million in punitive damages, according to court filings.

The verdict could be reduced on appeal, as the U.S. Supreme Court has found that punitive damages should generally be no more than nine times compensatory damages. Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement that the company plans to immediately appeal, calling the verdict “egregious and unconstitutional.” What the plaintiff lawyers in the Moore case based their arguments on, Haas claimed, was “junk science” that never should have been presented to the jury.

The company has consistently maintained that its products are safe, do not contain asbestos, and do not cause cancer. Nevertheless, J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. Mesothelioma, a particularly aggressive form of cancer, has been definitively linked to asbestos exposure.

Trey Branham, one of the attorneys representing Moore’s family, said after the verdict that his team is “hopeful that Johnson & Johnson will finally accept responsibility for these senseless deaths.” The statement reflects growing frustration among plaintiff attorneys who have been litigating these cases for years.

J&J is currently facing lawsuits from more than 67,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings. The number of lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma constitutes a small subset of these cases, with the vast majority involving ovarian cancer claims.

J&J has sought to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy, a controversial proposal that has been rejected three times by federal courts. Lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma were not part of the last bankruptcy proposal. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement, meaning that many lawsuits over mesothelioma have proceeded to trial in state courts in recent months.

Over the past year, J&J has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases, but Monday’s is among the largest. The company has, however, won some of the mesothelioma trials, including last week in South Carolina, where a jury found J&J not liable. The company has also been successful in reducing some of the awards on appeal, including in one Oregon case where a state judge granted J&J’s motion to throw out a $260 million verdict and hold a new trial. These mixed outcomes underscore the unpredictable nature of product liability litigation and suggest that the legal battle over J&J’s talc products will continue for the foreseeable future.