Johnson & Johnson has moved to disqualify plaintiffs attorney Andy Birchfield and his firm, Beasley Allen, from the talcum powder multidistrict litigation, citing a new partnership he formed with one of its former lawyers.
Birchfield and his firm have struck an alliance with James Conlan, a former partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath who worked on Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder litigation before setting up his own business venture last year called Legacy Liability Solutions LLC. Their partnership, highlighted in a Nov. 2 Bloomberg Law article by Conlan titled “Time to Ditch the Texas Two-Step for a New Mass Tort Strategy,” seeks to strike a $19 billion deal to resolve talc lawsuits brought by ovarian cancer victims against Johnson & Johnson. Conlan outlined the details of the proposal in a Nov. 9 letter to Johnson & Johnson’s board of directors, according to a letter attached to a motion Johnson & Johnson filed on Tuesday to show cause why Birchfield and his firm shouldn’t be disqualified from the talc litigation or, at the least, removed from the plaintiffs’ steering committee, where Beasley Allen principal Leigh O’Dell serves as co-lead counsel.
