![]() J&J didn’t tell the FDA that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc – in one case at levels reported as “rather high.” Coker sued Johnson & Johnson, alleging that “poisonous talc” in the company’s beloved product was her killer.ĮARLY INDICATION: Cady Evans (left) and her sister, Crystal Deckard, surrounded by pictures of their mother, Darlene Coker, whose lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson 20 years ago was one of the first to allege that the company’s Baby Powder caused cancer. Hobson knew that talc and asbestos often occurred together in the earth, and that mined talc could be contaminated with the carcinogen. He homed in on a suspect: the Johnson’s Baby Powder that Coker had used on her infant children and sprinkled on herself all her life. How had she been exposed to asbestos? “She wanted answers,” her daughter Cady Evans said.įighting for every breath and in crippling pain, Coker hired Herschel Hobson, a personal-injury lawyer. And she knew it afflicted mostly men who inhaled asbestos dust in mines and industries such as shipbuilding that used the carcinogen before its risks were understood.Ĭoker, 52 years old, had raised two daughters and was running a massage school in Lumberton, a small town in eastern Texas. She knew it was as rare as it was deadly, a signature of exposure to asbestos. She knew that her cancer, mesothelioma, arose in the delicate membrane surrounding her lungs and other organs.
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