In a Northern California trial to determine if Johnson & Johnson baby powder caused a man’s cancer, plaintiff Anthony Valadez told a jury on Monday he was seeking justice in his lawsuit and to prevent anyone else from having to go through what he had.
“Nobody should have to go through this,” Valadez said.
Valadez appeared in the courtroom gaunt and pale.
The trial is being streamed live courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
Valadez’s mother Anna Camacho also testified, at times breaking down recounting the agony she experienced watching her son suffer with mesothelioma. The trial had to be stopped for a break when Camacho sobbed.
When attorneys defending Johnson & Johnson attempted to pin the disease on asbestos exposure other than baby powder Camacho broke into tears.
“Is he (Valadez) going to live?” she cried. “My concern is my child. What am I going to do? I want it to go away, I want our life back to normal. If I lose my boy I don’t know if I could live. The good lord gave him to me. Why would he take him away?”
Camacho, a Merced resident, said she was a regular user of baby powder on her son and herself but objected to defense questions that she said portrayed her as a compulsive buyer buying baby powder from 28 stores in different cities, San Francisco, San Jose and Monterey. These included Save Mart, Lucky, Target, Walmart, Albertsons and Safeway markets.
She said she would routinely buy the powder along with toothpaste and other needed supplies while on a trip or to visit relatives (in San Jose).
“You’re trying to harass me in a certain way,” Camacho fighting back tears told the defense attorney.
Over the course of the month-long trial, defense has questioned Camacho as to why she would buy baby powder in San Francisco and Monterey, 100 miles away from her home in Merced.
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.
Doctors have given him probably a few months to live.
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.
Camacho told Denyse Clancy, Valadez’s attorney, that the first sign of trouble with her son was that he had a cough.
“He’d get chest pains,” she said. “I said you’re too young (23) to have heart problems. He said, 'I feel weird. I’m really feeling bad.'”
Taken to a hospital in Modesto, doctors found fluid around Valadez’s lungs. A drug was prescribed and Valadez would feel better temporarily but the fluid kept recurring. Doctors then found that the lymph nodes were swollen. A biopsy revealed cancer (mesothelioma).
Valadez was transferred to Stanford University for care in early 2022.
Camacho said her son struggled to breathe and had to have oxygen administered to him.
Asked if she and her family had suffered, Camacho answered “so much.”
“I don’t wish this on any parent,” she said. “Your child suffers and there is nothing you can do. He (Valadez) had to sleep bent over. You can’t lay back because you can’t breathe. It’s horrible. I can’t even imagine how he feels. You can do nothing except sit there and be as strong as you can.”
Defense attorneys hammered again on what they indicated were holes in the plaintiff lawyers' arguments. A photo was exhibited taken of a baby powder bottle in the family home that defense lawyers said had been discontinued by J&J (that bottle shape) several years before Valadez’s birth. They also contended that Valadez’s father a handyman had worked at construction sites, had died of a rare form of cancer and could be the source of the asbestos exposure, not baby powder. In addition, Valadez attended school in an old building with possible exposure.
Camacho corrected that the father was a gardener not in the construction business and that the school her son attended is still open.
When Valadez took the stand he said he used the baby powder on himself after childhood and during his teen years because he would sweat a lot.
“If you had seen a warning on the bottle would you have used it?” Clancy asked.
“I would not,” Valdez responded.
Valadez had worked at Home Depot in Merced. He recounted how he began to feel ill and despite it attempted to continue his work at the store.
“I didn’t want to leave (work) but I didn’t feel right and I was scared,” he said.
He said when he was admitted to the hospital he couldn’t have his mother at his side because of the ongoing COVID epidemic.
“I couldn’t have the comfort of anybody,” Valadez said, “nobody to tell me that things would be okay. It was hard.”
Fighting back tears Valadez said his life quickly crumbled when he heard the news from doctors that he had mesothelioma.
“It was like a roller coaster,” he said. “It happened so quickly (cancer diagnosis). I didn’t have time to process it I was like a scared kid. I’m limp now. I used to hang out with my friends and they text me and say let’s get together and I say I’m busy (because of feeling sick). I want to go back to how it used to be.”
J&J attorney Allison Brown, on cross examination, asked Valadez if he had been told by doctors that it was Johnson & Johnson baby powder that caused his illness.
Valadez said he would tune out such conversations to avoid panic and would let his mother speak with the doctors.
“I didn’t want to hear it, my mind was so boggled over what had happened to me,” he said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”