Johnson & Johnson is trying to get the Supreme Court to protect them as they face FORTY THOUSAND lawsuits over their talcum powder. A lower court recently threw out their bankruptcy protection, and the company is absolutely terrified. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Johnson and Johnson is trying to get the Supreme Court to protect them as they face 40,000 lawsuits, basically killing people, knowingly with a product that they understood was defective, had the ability to cause cancer, would cause thousands and thousands of women to die of cancer. Now a lower court recently threw that out and their bankruptcy protection disappeared. But now the company is terrified and they’re taking it up to the next level. Tell us this story.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, this is one that’s been, this saga has been playing out for years. Johnson and Johnson basically engaged in what they call the Texas two step. We know we’ve got tens of thousands of talcum powder lawsuits headed our way. It’s huge liability even though we’ve got a.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, full disclosure, we’re involved in that litigation. Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So what they did is they created a new subsidiary. So then they spun all those lawsuits over to the subsidiary that had no money because they just created it on paper. And then they go to the judge and say, well judge, look at this company with all these lawsuits. It has no money. We have to file for bankruptcy. And that judge, I think it was in New Jersey.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, Kaplan, what a, ugh.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, Kaplan. He said, okay. Hell yeah. You got no money. You got 40,000 lawsuits.
Mike Papantonio: They had $140 billion in Kaplan says, oh, this is a good idea.
Farron Cousins: Clearly you’re broke.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, that’s the, this guy’s still a judge. He’ll be a judge tomorrow. Okay. Make a ruling like that. The appellate court says really? Unanimously, say really? Judge Kaplan, what is it you don’t get? The company has $140 billion. They have agreed, by the way, this new company that was spinoff company where they take all their lawsuits, put it in the spinoff company, Johnson and Johnson agreed to pay for whatever it costs to get that done in bankruptcy. In other words, it was just collusion. And Kaplan could see it was collusion. The entire unanimous court said, yeah, Mr. Kaplan it’s collusion. And so now they hope to get relief from the Supreme Court.
Farron Cousins: Which is a terrifying thought.
Mike Papantonio: It is.
Farron Cousins: Obviously we have an exceptionally corporate Supreme Court, a corporate Supreme Court that transcends the party lines on that.
Mike Papantonio: Democrat and Republican. All of them are corporatists.
Farron Cousins: Right. I mean, we saw that already earlier this week.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: So this is horrifying because it’s not just about Johnson and Johnson and the people that they’ve killed with cancer and the people who are dying of cancer. This would have ramifications for every single corporation in this country. Anytime you’re facing lawsuits, whether, you know, if you’re Pfizer, whether you’re Dow okay, we’ll just create.
Mike Papantonio: 3M.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We’ll create a new company on paper. They’re now responsible for the lawsuits and our profits are in a different company.
Mike Papantonio: Go kill a bunch of people, make billions of dollars, hand out money to the CEO like it’s crazy money. It’s okay. Because when we get sued, we’re gonna say, oh my God, we’re gonna start this other company and we’re gonna say that that’s the company that now is bankrupt. And we’re gonna argue to the court, hey, we don’t have any money. They have all of our money. Yes Judge, we do have $300 billion. Yes, we do have that, but this company doesn’t. It is the biggest scam in the country. It’s called the Texas, and you exactly where you’d expect it to start, Texas, the Texas two step. You know, I don’t know. I think you’re right. It scares the bejesus out of anybody when this Supreme Court has to look at anything, especially when it’s protecting corporations to the detriment of consumers.
