Still from surveillance video of a fight between talc expert William Longo and another man at a hotel bar in Philadelphia
COLUMBIA, S.C. - One of the most important cogs in talc litigation is fighting to keep juries from hearing about his arrest for a drunken bar fight, arguing it has nothing to do with his methods for detecting asbestos in cosmetic talcum powder.
William Longo, who has made millions testifying in asbestos cases, was arrested in 2024 after getting in a fight with another man at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown during the ASTM International conference. An investigative report by the hotel said Longo “started a fight with his friends” at the Circ bar, then “proceeded to bother another guest” before he was arrested by police and taken to jail. ASTM is an organization that establishes standards for testing materials.
“(Longo) had to be escorted out by police,” the hotel’s incident report says. “He was in Circ bar when he was intoxicated and hard to deal with. He picked fights with his fellow friends and had no respect for the staff or police, once they were called.
“Mr. Longo refused to go to his room as the police requested. He finally took his last swing in front of the police when he was then handcuffed and escorted out.”
Johnson & Johnson argues the hotel incident is relevant because Longo’s changing explanations of what happened illustrate his propensity for shading the truth. J&J has long accused Longo of using invalid methods to “detect” asbestos fibers in talc that are in fact talcum powder particles. Some of his research was conducted on decades-old bottles of Baby Powder purchased on eBay.
In repeated depositions, Longo at first claimed no memory of a fight, then after video evidence became available, accused someone else of pushing him down steps and finally refused to discuss the incident.
“Although plaintiff claims that the altercation had no relation to Dr. Longo’s scientific work, this is precisely because Dr. Longo first gave untruthful testimony that no fight occurred and then, after the J&J Defendants obtained the video, refused to answer questions about it,” J&J said in a recent filing in a talc lawsuit in South Carolina.
Lawyers at Dean Omar Branham Shirley have asked Judge Jean H. Toal to prohibit J&J’s lawyers from asking questions about the incident in front of jurors in an upcoming trial. Longo was arrested for trespass but the charges were later dropped, Dean Omar said.
“Dr. Longo’s arrest is simply not relevant,” the law firm said in a court filing. Longo didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.
In court filings, J&J has said the altercation began after Longo attempted to recruit someone to work for his consulting firm MAS. Longo, who testified he had three drinks over two hours, got angry when people at his table criticized his methods and the person he tried to recruit said he would never work for Longo, J&J said.
One Marriott loss prevention officer summarized the incident like this:
“(Guest) asked William to leave him alone as he could tell that he was intoxicated and should go to his room. William then became aggressive calling (guest) names getting in his face, causing (guest) to push William out of his face. At this moment William fell onto floor and proceeded to get back into (guest’s) face calling him names.
“(Guest) again pushed him down and William fell he hit his head on the chair or table causing a bruise and bleeding. At his time, Mr. Longo continued to be aggressive and didn't want to leave the area. Police was called and medic 7 arrived shortly after around 2100hrs and informed Mr. Longo he needed to go to his room or be charged with trespassing, he refused and swung on another guest.”
In a December 2024 deposition taken in a Pittsburgh case that produced a bizarre verdict, Longo said he didn’t recall getting in a fight, only having drinks with friends and waking up after midnight “sitting in a wheelchair handcuffed” with a “huge bump on the side of my head.”
“I don't have knowing, intelligent, and voluntary memory whatsoever of confronting anybody,” Longo testified, adding: “There was a lot of rumors flying around after that, everything from I got in a fight and had somebody in a headlock and was beating him, that I was shooting birds at the cops. I mean, it was crazy. I didn't know a bunch of nerds could come up with that much stuff.”
In a March 2025 deposition, Longo changed his story to say “a gentlemen stood up and grabbed me by the shirt, threw me down three flights of stairs that I don't know who is. And then the next thing I remember was coming conscious at a hospital handcuffed to a wheelchair.”
Questioned a third time in August 2025 in a Baltimore case, Longo said he’d viewed the hotel surveillance video of the incident and corrected himself to say he only fell down two stairs. He refused to say anything more about what happened. A still from the video included in J&J’s Nov. 2 court filing shows Longo apparently lunging at a man in a dark shirt who has his arm outstretched to hold Longo off.
“The video demonstrates that Dr. Longo was, in fact, never thrown down any stairs and instead falls directly backward after being pushed when he aggressively rushed up to the stranger’s table,” J&J said.
The judge in the Pittsburgh case considered Dean Omar’s arguments the incident would only inflame jurors but rejected it, saying there was evidence Longo got in an argument with fellow experts about his testing methods and his response “bears upon his reputation as a professional.”
Longo once dismissed the idea of asbestos in talc as an “urban legend,” when he was hired to testify about asbestos exposure from industrial sources. He switched his opinion after lawyers started hiring him in talc cases. He has also switched methods, once bragging he’s “a TEM guy,” for transmission electron microscopy, but later changing to polarized light microscopy. Johnson & Johnson argues judges must consider such dramatic changes in methodology when assessing whether an expert’s opinions are reliable.
Without testimony from experts like Longo, talc cases fail. Their admissibility was at issue in a massive MDL in New Jersey over ovarian cancer before Johnson & Johnson reached a settlement for billions less than it had previously offered.
Plaintiff lawyers are still pursuing multimillion-dollar lawsuits claiming talc was contaminated with asbestos and causes mesothelioma, a fatal cancer of the abdominal wall. Multiple cases are before Judge Toal, a retired chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court now in charge of the state’s consolidated asbestos docket whose controversial strategy for finding money for claimants may soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
