L'Oreal says 'vague' hair-relaxer product claims should be thrown out - Affiliates from a French company that makes cosmetics L'Oreal (OREP.PA), as well as other companies in the beauty industry, have requested a U.S. judge to dismiss claims that they produced and sold harmful hair-relaxing chemicals that can cause cancer and other health issues.
In a file filed in Chicago federal court on Thursday, lawyers representing L’Oreal USA and other manufacturers have launched their first legal defence against consumers’ product-liability demands in a multidistrict lawsuit involving 14 defendants and over 250 cases.
A plethora of lawsuits were announced, and then they were consolidated within cases that were later consolidated in the Northern District of Illinois after the release in October of a National Institutes of Health study which concluded that women who utilized specific hair-relaxing products at least once every year were at higher risk of developing uterine cancer.
India’s Godrej SON Holdings and Dabur International, based in Dubai, are other defendants.
The defence lawyers who filed their joint statement in their joint filing criticized the plaintiffs’ claims for being “vague” and said they were built in “unsupported conclusions.”
The attorneys representing the plaintiffs have yet to reply to a request for clarification immediately.
The representatives for L’Oreal and the lawyers for Godrej and Dabur responded after a period of time to similar inquiries.
U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland on Thursday was set to hold an informational meeting in the case. The plaintiffs have stated that they would like a trial date set in the fall of 2024.
In a consolidated complaint, the plaintiffs complained in May that L’Oreal and others “systematically misrepresented and continue to misrepresent the significant health impacts of hair relaxer use.” The complaint alleged that L’Oreal and the other companies “exposed plaintiffs to brutally toxic products without warning.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers claimed that the companies targeted their marketing of women of race and colour, taking “advantage of centuries of racial discrimination and cultural coercion.”
Defence lawyers presented arguments in their efforts to dispel claims that the complaint did not pinpoint specific products associated with different brands of hair relaxers. They argued that many of the companies named in the lawsuit “carry more than one product that might be considered a ‘hair straightening product.'”
The case is called In re hair Relaxer Product Liability and Marketing Practices U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 1:23-cv-00818.
Plaintiffs in the case: Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmermann of DiCello Levitt and Fidelma Fitzgerald from Motley Rice; Michael London of Douglas & London; and Benjamin Crump of Ben Crump Law Firm
In L’Oreal USA: Dennis Ellis of Ellis George Cipollone O’Brien Annaguey and others from the Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani law firm.
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