The Cover Up Coverup

[Passages]

Warren Buffett’s conglomerate owns a company that profited off a cancer-linked makeup ingredient. Now the firm aims to create a legal precedent — and deny victims remuneration.


Business
Mar 19, 2025

by Helen Santoro

Juliet Gray never thought her makeup could harm her. But after years of regularly applying powders, eye shadow, and blush, Gray was diagnosed with peritoneal mesothelioma, an aggressive, incurable form of cancer. She can’t be certain what led to the disease, but for decades, scientists have known the cancer’s primary cause is long-term exposure to asbestos — a common contaminant in talc, one of the main ingredients in well-known cosmetic brands.

Like thousands of others, Gray is suing Whittaker, Clark, & Daniels, a longtime talc supplier for cosmetic companies like Revlon, Maybelline, and L’Oréal, alleging it exposed her to harmful levels of asbestos without her knowledge. But two years ago, the company filed for bankruptcy, placing all these lawsuits on hold. Company executives claimed in a filing they had “dissipating finite assets,” with only $80 million “cash-on-hand” and did “not have access to any other funding.”

But these claims ignore the fact that Whittaker, Clark, & Daniels’ assets and liabilities are owned by a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, billionaire Warren Buffett’s multinational conglomerate which holds trillions of dollars in assets.

In 2007, three years after Whittaker, Clark, & Daniels ceased talc operations amid mounting health concerns, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary purchased the company’s equity with the goal of profiting from its remaining assets, which included cash and insurance policies. But in 2023, as the “deluge” of asbestos lawsuits continued to climb, the former talc supplier filed for bankruptcy — a legal maneuver known as the Texas Two-Step in which giant corporations use bankruptcy courts to shield themselves from legal liabilities.

https://www.levernews.com/the-cover-up-coverup/

The "good" billionaire.