SPRINGFIELD – St. Clair County Circuit Judge Christopher Kolker can’t bring Johnson & Johnson chief executive Alex Gorsky before jurors in an ovarian cancer trial, Illinois Supreme Court Justices ruled on July 7.
They allowed a motion for a supervisory order against Kolker, who ruled in June that the estate of Betty Driscoll could call Gorsky to the stand.
Johnson & Johnson claimed Gorsky needed to stick to his business including manufacture of virus vaccine through his Janssen subsidiary.
Trial started on July 12, and Kolker conducted jury selection until day’s end.
Trial could last a month.
Plaintiff Betty Driscoll was born in East St. Louis, lived in Smithton, and died in 2016.
Colleen Cadigan sued Johnson & Johnson in 2018, as executrix of her estate.
Plaintiff attorney John Driscoll filed the complaint in association with former chief circuit judge John Baricevic and son C.J. Baricevic.
Online obituaries connect John Driscoll to Colleen Cadigan as cousins.
Betty Driscoll’s obituary shows Peggy Cadigan as a surviving sister and John J. Driscoll as a surviving brother.
An obituary of John J. Driscoll, who died in 2017, shows John Joseph Driscoll as son, Peggy Cadagin as sister, and Colleen Cadagin as niece.
The estate’s complaint alleges that Betty Driscoll used Johnson & Johnson talcum powder from 1966 to 1973, and suffered fatal ovarian cancer as a result.
The complaint seeks damages for failure to warn women of danger.
Kolker set trial to start in May 2020, but the virus set it back 14 months.
On May 21, the estate served notice that it would take Gorsky’s testimony.
On June 2, Johnson & Johnson counsel Jason Rankin moved to quash the notice.
“Courts routinely bar efforts to compel testimony from high ranking corporate executives because they recognize that testimony from such corporate officers is typically sought for purposes of gamesmanship and harassment,” Rankin wrote.
According to Rankin’s brief, Gorsky oversees 264 operating businesses in 60 countries.
Rankin wrote that plaintiffs seek to turn him into a full time witness, forcing him to fly around the country and testify in trial after trial.
He challenged Kolker’s jurisdiction over Gorsky, who lives in Pennsylvania and works in New Jersey.
He further argued that requiring Gorky’s testimony would disrupt his supervision of Janssen, which is deploying vaccine across the world.
According to Rankin’s brief, the estate didn’t ask Johnson & Johnson to designate a corporate representative for deposition or depose any company witnesses.
He wrote that 20,000 pages of depositions and trial testimony from other talc cases were more than adequate to try the case.
Kolker denied Johnson & Johnson’s motion at a hearing on June 15.
“I think every witness thinks any time they’re called, it’s burdensome and harassing,” Kolker said.
“I think sometimes maybe for the commercial pilot, the single mom who is working at a fast food restaurant trying to support her family and get rent paid, it might be more harassing for them than it is for a CEO.”
Johnson & Johnson counsel Beth Bauer sought relief in Springfield on June 21.
She argued that there was nothing plaintiff could ask Gorsky that more knowledgeable witnesses hadn’t answered.
She claimed Kolker ignored the pertinent burdens that confront Gorsky.
She claimed that if every court took Kolker’s approach, Gorsky would be forced to abandon his role as chief executive.
She also claimed the fact that a company might be subject to personal jurisdiction didn’t provide a basis for exercising personal jurisdiction over nonresident officers.
“Plaintiff’s counsel refused to agree to any limitations on the subject matters of Mr. Gorsky’s testimony,” Bauer wrote.
She claimed the plan was to harass him rather than produce useful information.
Paul Johnson of the Driscoll firm opposed a supervisory order on June 28.
Johnson claimed a chief executive of a corporation that denies the toxicity of its products in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary should expect to be confronted with the evidence in front of juries.
He claimed defendants don’t dictate how and under what circumstances an Illinois plaintiff needs testimony from a witness.
He claimed 26,695 ovarian cancer cases are pending in multi district litigation in New Jersey and more than 3,000 are pending in state courts nationwide.