A New Jersey jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $750 million in punitive damages to four people who said the company’s baby powder gave them cancer.

The Thursday verdict came after the pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, Alex Gorsky, testified in the lawsuit last month, marking the first time he had taken the stand in a jury trial over the alleged dangers of its baby powder.

“We believe the jury was speaking directly to Alex Gorsky,” said Chris Placitella, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

But Johnson & Johnson will only be on the hook for a penalty of roughly $185 million because of a New Jersey state law that limits punitive damages to five times the compensatory damages in a case. A different jury gave the plaintiffs $37.2 million in compensation in an earlier phase of the trial.

New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson said it will appeal both phases. The company complained in a statement of “numerous legal errors that subjected the jury to irrelevant information and prevented them from hearing meaningful evidence.”

The four plaintiffs in the case alleged that they got mesothelioma, a cancer affecting the lining of the lungs, because they used Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder, according to the Wall Street Journal. More than 16,000 plaintiffs have sued the company saying its powder caused mesothelioma or ovarian cancer and that Johnson & Johnson didn’t warn consumers properly, the paper reported.

A Reuters investigation published in 2018 found that Johnson & Johnson did not disclose the discovery of small amounts of asbestos in its talc over several decades. Asbestos can cause cancer when inhaled and has been linked to mesothelioma. The company dismissed the report at the time.

Johnson & Johnson recalled about 33,000 bottles of baby powder in October after a US Food and Drug Administration contractor found small amounts of asbestos in samples of baby powder. The company later blamed the FDA contractor for the scare, saying outside testing found no asbestos in baby powder samples.

With Post wires