A jury in the US has ordered multi-product giant Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 million (£51 million) to the family of a woman who claimed that her death was linked to the use of the company’s baby powder talc-based product.

The family’s lawyers claim that the company knew the risks of the product but failed to warn customers. The case may now open the floodgates for thousands of similar lawsuits which are currently pending across the US. Under pressure from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics coalition, the company agreed in 2012 to eliminate the ingredients 1,4-dioxane and formaldehyde, both considered probable human carcinogens, from all products by 2015.

As part of the trial, evidence was produced from a 1997 internal memo written by a medical consultant at Johnson & Johnson advising that "anybody who denies (the) risks" between "hygenic" talc use and ovarian cancer will be publicly perceived in the same light as those who denied a link between smoking cigarettes and cancer: "denying the obvious in the face of all evidence to the contrary."