Two doctors treating plaintiff Anthony Valadez recounted the physical agony the Merced man went through in fighting mesothelioma in a trial to determine if Johnson & Johnson baby powder caused the disease.
“You have been involved in keeping him alive?” asked Valadez's attorney Joseph Satterley.
“I would like to think so,” responded Dr. Mohana Roy, a Stanford University M.D. and Valadez’s treating oncologist.
Defense attorneys continued with their theme that Valadez could have had asbestos exposure through family contacts and history, and that the rarity of his disease at the young age of 23 makes it difficult to pin on baby powder.
Mesothelioma has a latency period in which exposure to asbestos to the onset of illness can take decades.
The defense also indicated that Roy's pre-trial plaintiff attorney declaration allowing Valadez to file suit was worded as such. The fact that the document said there “may be” a correlation between asbestos in baby powder and Valadez’s mesothelioma wasn’t proof.
Roy said she was comfortable with the wording.
The trial in the Alameda Superior Court is being streamed live courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
Valadez is suing Johnson & Johnson and other corporations including retailers Safeway, Walmart and Target stores plus LTL Management Company, claiming exposure to talc powder for 23 years between 1998 and 2022 caused his mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the linings of the lungs.
Valadez has pericardial mesothelioma, the rarest of three types of the disease. The other two are pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma.
Johnson & Johnson has faced 40,000 lawsuits nationally over a number of recent years and in 2023 switched from using talc powder worldwide to using corn starch in its baby powder. Experts have said it is safe and asbestos free. The company, through its subsidiary LTL, filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and later offered to settle the lawsuits for $9 billion after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier attempt to settle the claims.
Bankruptcy stopped legal actions against the company. Plaintiffs nationwide want the bankruptcy protective status removed.
A U.S. bankruptcy court allowed the Alameda trial to proceed only because Valadez is not expected to live beyond a few more months. Even if he wins a judgment any monetary award would be delayed until the bankruptcy process is resolved.
Safeway, Walmart and Target stores are accused along with J&J of selling tainted baby powder to Valadez’s mother who then used it on the plaintiff.
Two of Valadez’s doctors described for a jury the ordeal their patient went through. Both said it’s remarkable he is still alive.
Satterley on Wednesday asked Dr. Leah Backhus, a Stanford University treating physician, what his client’s prognosis is.
“Very poor,” Backhus answered.
“Will it (mesothelioma) take his life?”
“Yes.”
Under cross examination, defense attorney Allison Brown got Backhus to agree that doctors routinely use medicinal talc powder for pleurodesis surgery (sticks the lung to the chest wall).
"If you had a concern would you talk to them (patients) about talc?" Brown asked.
"I don't talk to them about talc which is a palliative (symptom relief) procedure," Backhus said.
On Thursday, Roy recounted Valadez’s medical treatments and the nausea, vomiting and pain he endured over a 19-month period. Cancer masses encasing the heart and fluid in the lungs made breathing difficult and Valadez had to sleep in an upright bent-over position to deal with the pain.
Roy said Valadez had bouts of depression and catatonia, a frozen-like state where he couldn’t talk and stared, unresponsive, but eventually came out of it. Transitioning to hospice care is an option but Valadez has not agreed to it.
An experimental drug called Optune was considered but not used.
“What is his prognoses?” Satterley asked.
“He’s proved me wrong,” Roy said. “But in the next three to six months I expect him to pass away.”
Roy said Valadez’s weight had gone from 220 pounds down to 156.
“Has he been in great pain?”
“Yes,” Roy said.
Brown described as “incredibly rare” Valadez’s disease.
Roy agreed.
“You never told him that baby powder was the cause of his disease?” Brown asked.
Roy said that she had not.
Brown said that Valadez’s disease was more common in older men and those with occupational exposures to asbestos.
“Yes,” Roy agreed.
Roy said she understood that Valadez’s father had worked at job sites where asbestos could have been used and Valadez attended school in an old building. In addition he had family members with diseases, his father with bone cancer and an aunt with breast cancer.
“His (Valadez’s) age 23 is a young age for cancer,” Brown said.
“Yes,” Roy responded.
In 2022, Valadez’s mother provided information to doctors that her son had used large amounts of baby powder. According to the testimony within a week Roy received an email from an attorney with Satterley’s law firm.
“They attached an authorization to talk to you about his medical case and potential litigation,” Brown said.
“Yes.”
Roy also agreed she received (mesothelioma) case reports from plaintiff attorneys.
Regarding the declaration that she signed, Brown asked Roy if she would have been uncomfortable with a written line that said that baby powder was the “cause” of the illness.
“I felt more comfortable with the word correlation (between cancer and baby powder),” Roy said.
“You don’t know, right?” Brown asked.
“Any exposure you don’t know (for certain),” Roy responded. ‘It didn’t seem to be my place to establish causation.”