A jury has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $18.8 million to a California man who said the company's popular talc-based baby powder caused him to develop cancer.

Twenty-four-year-old Emory Hernandez Valadez filed his lawsuit last year in California state court against the pharmaceutical and consumer manufacturer accusing it of causing his cancer diagnosis of mesothelioma. Hernandez says he developed the deadly cancer in the tissue around his heart after he was heavily exposed to the talc-based baby powder during his childhood years.

The California jury ruled that Valadez was entitled to compensatory damages for the economic and non-economic losses he sustained. Hernandez argued that J&J should be held responsible for his mounting medical bills and the pain and suffering he endured because of his cancer diagnosis.

The trial lasted six weeks and ultimately resolved in Valadez’s favor for the monetary damages he sought. However, the jury declined to award punitive damages against J&J. Valadez was awarded $3.8 million in economic damages and $15 million in non-economic damages.

Despite winning his lawsuit, Valadez may have to wait to collect his damages as J&J is currently embroiled in a bankruptcy court order that in part has paused litigation over the company's controversial talc-based baby powder.

Representatives for the company were adamant about their innocence throughout the trial. During closing arguments, lawyers for the company said that there was no evidence that could link Valadez’s mesothelioma diagnosis to the company’s baby powder. Valadez’s lawyers, however, pushed back during closing arguments, calling the company’s cover-up of its asbestos-laced baby powder “despicable.”

Although the company’s baby powder was not its best seller, it was one of the most recognizable products offered by the pharmaceutical giant. The first lawsuit against the controversial product was filed in 1999 by a woman who claimed she developed mesothelioma after a lifetime of using the baby powder. The lawsuits continue to trickle forward, with the past decade seeing a flurry of litigation against Johnson & Johnson and its attempted cover-up of knowingly selling talc-based baby powder that had traces of harmful asbestos.

After the judgment, the company’s litigation VP, Erik Haas, shared that the company would be appealing the verdict. Haas said the judgment was “irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.”

Haas said the verdict was “based on erroneous rulings by the trial judge” and that “Those rulings prevented us from sharing with the jury critical facts that demonstrate the plaintiff’s exceedingly rare form of mesothelioma was not caused by baby powder.”

The nearly weeks-long trial was rare in that all talc-based lawsuits were halted because of an automatic stay following Johnson & Johnson's announcement of bankruptcy earlier this year.

The Oakland trial was the first J&J baby powder-related trial to move forward in almost two years. Despite the automatic stay, U.S. Bankruptcy Chief Judge Michael Kaplan of the District of New Jersey Allowed the trial to go forward after repeated requests from Hernandez's legal team.