Alice Salas is one of thousands of people who have brought personal injury suits against the company with claims that its baby powder gave them ovarian cancer due to likely asbestos contamination.

But the company’s use — or abuse, her lawyers say — of an obscure statute in the Texas Business Organizations Code has put her claim and thousands of others on hold. Known colloquially as the “Texas two-step,” the stratagem has offered New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson and other large multinationals a way to try and minimize their liability in such cases by filing for bankruptcy.

“For a Secretary of State filing fee, these companies are able to launder all of their liabilities, just like you would drug money through a real estate transaction,” Shrader said. “They launder all their liabilities in about 10 to 30 minutes online, and then the good company is free of thousands of people dying of cancer from their products.”

The Texas two-step, Shrader said, is a way for a company worth nearly half a trillion dollars to treat people who are dying of cancer “like an accounting problem.”

At the center of that legal maelstrom, Salas had a poignant message for the people who hold executive positions in Johnson & Johnson: “Look at my hair. Look at my face. Listen to how sick my body has been for the last 16 years because of the chemo, because of a product that caused this disease, this cancer. Don’t you care how I feel? Don’t you care about helping me and others like me? Why are you trying to avoid it? Why are you trying to abuse the system instead of trying to help the people who have used your products?”

Read more at Fort Worth Star-Telegram.