Cosmetics companies hit with giant class

L'Oreal, Lancome and InterBeauty Cosmetics Israel were hit with a giant class action in a Tel Aviv court today, over the claimed capabilities of anti-wrinkle products.

The NIS 1.7 billion claim argues that the companies making or distributing cosmetics products for women promise that their products will smooth wrinkles in the face, or fill or repair facial wrinkles.

However, there is no scientific evidence to back the companies' promises, the plaintiffs argue: it is outright fraud. Yet their specious claims caused any number of women in Israel to buy these products, wasting their money on an illusion that the cosmetic product can actually reduce their wrinkles, they charge.

The plaintiffs argue that vainly trying to treat wrinkles with cosmetics may delay a decision to opt for surgery, such as a face-lift, deep peeling, injections of filler into wrinkles, partial facial paralysis (botox) and suchlike.

As a result, the public of women buying these cosmetics is caused unwarranted suffering until they wise up and realize the magnitude of the illusion, say the plaintiffs.

The companies are violating the law that prohibits them from misleading consumers, say the plaintiffs, adding that there is a causative relationship between the violation and the harm that the consumers suffer.

The plaintiffs, who describe themselves as wrinkled, say that "like many other women who are aware of their external appearance", they believed the advertisements of the defendant companies, that the products would do them good. They bought them to smooth the wrinkles on their faces, but the application brought them no benefit.

Their case features quotes from ads, one stating (translation from the Hebrew): "Dramatic stretching effect without surgery", and another promising, "Now you can beat gravity".

The suit appends an opinion by a dermatology expert, who ruled that moisturizers can reduce wrinkles only marginally and temporarily, by wetting the outermost layer of skin with water and trapping the water in the layer with oily compounds.

The claim amount was reached based on the assumption that 50% of the women in Israel aged 30 to 50, or 447,000 women, used or still use these products, and that 40% of them bought products from the defendants at an average monthly cost of NIS 275 per consumer.

That works out to NIS 49 million a month times the three years that these products are marketed in Israel, namely - or NIS 1.7 billion.

source: www.haaretz.com