This week, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing that will examine the treatment of lawsuits in the bankruptcy process. There is a great hue and cry that the bankruptcy process isn’t fair and that reforms, endorsed by plaintiffs’ lawyers, are needed to exempt some lawsuits from the bankruptcy process.
This process is playing out in real time as Johnson & Johnson just announced it is placing a subsidiary that includes its liability for tens of thousands of talcum powder claims into bankruptcy. The news comes despite three recent defense verdicts in talc cases in usually pro-plaintiff jurisdictions- St. Louis, Philadelphia and St. Clair County, Illinois.
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