Predatory lawyers love trials by jury because they are almost certain to win. It won't help their clients much. There are some instances where they do get some money. The so-called "Erin Brockovich case" led to a settlement even though the company could easily show that the water was not harmful. Yet nearly three decades later the people who say their stories won the case lament they didn't receive much.

Meanwhile, one of the attorneys from the winning side is in jail for fraud. 

A jury trial is easy to win because of anti-business populism. Nearly everyone on a jury signs the backs of checks, not the fronts. They have had a boss they dislike, a company they disliked. During the Hollywood strike, some in their group are even calling for all of capitalism to be torn down. As if instituting communism would make movies better. Who remembers all the great cinema of the USSR and China?

A trial by jury had made a splash in corporate journalism again, with all of the wrongdoing innuendo journalists who need to get pageviews can muster, but it won't mean much to the company or the lawyers suing.

In this case, a plaintiff in, naturally, the San Francisco area, claimed his mesothelioma was caused by exposure to baby powder so he sued Johnson  &  Johnson. But while everyone has heard of mesothelioma because of predatory lawyer ads on TV and social media, it is not one disease caused by asbestos, There is no evidence his form of mesothelioma was. So claiming it resulted from talc in baby powder is even more of a stretch.

But a jury, especially on the coast of California who, until Republicans decided to become anti-vaccine in 2021 had more vaccine denial than the entire US combined, was certain to agree 'big corporations must be held accountable' and threw out a bizarre $19 million number. Everyone hugged. 

The client will likely never see a penny unless his lawyer begins fishing for a settlement. The reason he'll probably get nothing is juries don't care about science, but an appellate court only cares about that. And the science will show it is impossible that baby powder caused his disease. 

Scientists don't like to speak in absolutes, it is why scientists lose nearly every fight to environmental lawyers, so I will say it again; im.poss.i.ble. 

Even the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in California, the most overturned at the Supreme Court in our country's history because they put California woo ahead of critical thinking or the Constitution, is going to kick this one out. Or reduce it to $50,000. Because emotions don't decide science, facts and evidence do.