France-based Imerys SA is offering to sell a bankrupt North American unit that was historically a major supplier of talc to Johnson & Johnson in an effort to escape litigation linking its products to ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Only a few product-liability lawsuits had been filed against the U.S. business in 2011 when it was acquired by Imerys, but by the time the unit filed for bankruptcy last year, Imerys Talc America Inc. was swamped by roughly 13,800 claims tied to ovarian cancer and 850 related to mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer. Imerys Talc America had supplied talc to Johnson & Johnson, the prime target of this litigation. Johnson & Johnson has said that its products are safe and not contaminated, and has offered to defend Imerys Talc America in the lawsuits where both companies are named as defendants. Court documents don’t put a dollar figure on Imerys’s potential liabilities or on the combined value of the assets to be assigned to the bankruptcy trust for Imerys Talc America.
