Legal News

P&G Scores in Tampon War; Toys ?R? Us Suit Granted Class Status

By Amir Efrati

We’re not ashamed to say that when tampon commercials flash across the Law Blog’s Samsung television, our eyes tend to glaze over.

It turns out, though, there’s a long-running legal battle between Playtex Products and toiletries giant Procter & Gamble, whose headquarters in Cincinnati doesn’t offer tours to the public, the Law Blog was sad to learn earlier this year on our first visit to the land of Five-Way Chili.

Manhattan federal district court judge William Pauley III ruled on Tuesday in favor of P&G, repped by Kramer Levin, by denying Platex’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop P&G from boasting that its Tampax Pearl provides better protection and comfort than Playtex’s Gentle Glide. Here’s the story from AmLaw Litigation Daily.

It all started in 2002 when Playtex, now repped by Davis Polk, filed a false claims suit against P&G. The case eventually went to a jury in 2003, which returned a verdict in favor of Playtex, resulting in an injunction preventing P&G from making certain claims about its Tampax Pearl. But last year Judge Pauley granted a request by P&G to modify the injunction after the company had made improvements to its product.

A different battle is heating up in Philly. According to this WSJ story, a federal judge granted class-action status to a consumer lawsuit that accuses Babies ‘R’ Us, a unit of Toys “R” Us, and five manufacturers of conspiring to fix prices on a variety of baby goods, including strollers, high chairs, car seats and breast pumps.

The suit survived despite a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that minimum-pricing agreements between manufacturers and retailers were no longer inherently illegal, as they had been treated judicially for decades. Numerous price-fixing allegations across the country have been thrown out by judges in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.

In her ruling Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Anita Brody said that while agreements “setting minimum resale prices can have pro-competitive justifications,” the Supreme Court “stated that lower courts must be diligent in eliminating their anti-competitive uses from the market.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 16, 2009 (boomark / email).