A judge has rejected Johnson & Johnson’s move to disqualify Beasley Allen from leadership of the talcum powder litigation.
Friday’s order by Atlantic County Superior Court Judge John Porto comes one week before a key deadline in Johnson & Johnson’s pre-packaged third bankruptcy, which would provide $6.48 billion to talc victims. Porto, who held an evidentiary hearing on the disqualification issue on March 25, April 10 and May 3, alongside U.S. Magistrate Judge Rukhsanah Singh, in the District of New Jersey, concluded that Johnson & Johnson hadn’t provided evidence that its former attorney, James Conlan, founder of Legacy Liability Solutions LLC, had shared confidential information with Beasley Allen principal Andy Birchfield, in Montgomery, Alabama, when the two began working together a year ago on a plan to resolve the talc litigation.