J&J Talc Unit Seeks to Avoid Paying Brown Rudnick Legal Fees

Brown Rudnick LLP should be barred from collecting legal fees stemming from its work on the bankruptcy for Johnson & Johnson’s talc liability unit since its retention was never approved, the company said.

Brown Rudnick’s $4.3 million fee application for work representing a committee of cancer-stricken talc users during Red River Talc LLC’s Chapter 11 case “is procedurally improper,” the J&J subsidiary said in a filing Thursday with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

“It is simply inappropriate to seek allowance of fees and expenses in the absence of a retention order,” it ...