Madison Reed Hair Color Harsh Ingredients New York Class Action

Consumers nowadays prefer to buy personal care products that do not contain harsh ingredients that cause allergic reactions or harm to skin or hair. One company that understands this preference is the defendant in this case, Madison Reed, Inc., which offers hair color products. The complaint for this class action alleges that the company markets its products as being free from the “harsh” ingredients in traditional hair colors, but claims that the products substitute others that may cause “among other things, hair loss, scalp irritation and overall damage to hair.”

The class for this action is all persons who bought the Madison Reed products in New York, during the fullest period allowed by law.

According to the complaint, Madison Reed markets its hair color products by mail, on the Internet, and with TV and radio ads: “In fact, [Madison Reed] has run commercial on SiriusXM for years now, narrated by [Madison Reed’s] founder Amy Errett, boasting that the Products do not contain ‘harsh’ ingredients like ‘ammonia’ and, instead that they are full of ‘good’ ingredients.”

The complaint alleges that the company touts its products as being free of substances like ammonia and “certain ‘offending,’ irritating, and virtually unknown to the reasonable consumer, chemicals like PPD, resorcinol, parabens, phthalates, SLS, etc.”

However, the complaint claims that the company replaces these ingredients with substances that may not be that much better. For example, the company does not use PPD because it can cause an allergic reaction in consumers, but the company “replaced PPD with an ingredient that still causes an allergic reaction in a whopping 1 out of every 2 individuals allergic to PPD. [Madison Reed] makes other representations about its removal of certain other ‘harsh’ ingredients that it replaces with ingredients unknown to reasonable consumers that are no less harsh or harmful.”

“In fact,” the complaint alleges, “one of the chemicals [Madison Reed] used to replace ammonia, which it has called ‘harsh’ for years now in its advertising, is not only made from ammonia, but it has also been shown through scientific studies to cause hair loss and more damage to hair than the chemical it replaced.”

The complaint reproduces some of Madison Reed’s advertising and promises, and reviews the replacements for some of the “harsh” ingredients left out.

Listed in the complaint are postings from online sites from consumers who have bought the products and who have had hair loss, scalp irritation, and other problems after use.

While the company purports to use safer or gentler ingredients, the complaint alleges that its products “are formulated with ingredients that can cause scalp irritation, excessive shedding, hair loss, thinning, dryness, breakage and/or balding during normal use by consumers.” It describes the company as “[u]ndeterred by medical science…”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Deceptive Advertising, Deceptive Labels, Made or Constructed with Harmful Chemicals