J&J’s ‘Texas two-step’ talc bank­rupt­cy case heads back to ap­peals court

In late Feb­ru­ary, John­son & John­son won a con­tro­ver­sial case sur­round­ing its bank­rupt­cy fil­ing de­signed to set­tle 38,000 law­suits ac­cus­ing its talc-based prod­ucts of caus­ing can­cer. How­ev­er, it ap­pears that bank­rupt­cy case is far from over as the US ap­peals court has now agreed to re­vis­it that rul­ing.

The dis­pute stems from J&J’s use of a “Texas Two-step”: ap­ply­ing a law that en­abled it to spin out its li­a­bil­i­ties re­lat­ed to the on­go­ing talc law­suits in­to a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny. That com­pa­ny, known as LTL Man­age­ment, then filed for bank­rupt­cy — a move that shield­ed LTL (and there­fore J&J) from fur­ther ju­di­cial ac­tion in the talc law­suits.

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