> Johnson & Johnson in its bid to use bankruptcy to block lawsuits from cancer victims

I'm not an expert, I really only know what Matt Levine has published in his Bloomberg newsletter, but this sounds like a very disingenuous description in order to stoke outrage. The bankruptcy proceedings were more about orderly management of a bunch of different lawsuits in different jurisdictions on different timelines.

At least by Levine's analysis, the victims were likely to fair better as a whole through the bankruptcy proceedings (all victims would be guaranteed a fair share) than without it (victims who got their court cases through the system faster might get more than later verdicts).

Or maybe Levine was unfairly charitable to them and the bankruptcy thing was purely to minimize total payments.