Commercial Based on Unreliable “Lab Test” Enjoined

This posting was written by William Zale, Editor of CCH Advertising Law Guide.

Cat litter manufacturer Clorox was preliminarily enjoined by the federal district court in New York City from airing a television commercial making comparative claims about cat litter odor reduction.

Competitor Church & Dwight (C & D) was likely to succeed on the merits of its Lanham Act false advertising suit that the commercial made literally false claims based on an unreliable “lab test,” and was likely to suffer irreparable harm, the court held.

Clorox’s litter used carbon as an odor fighting ingredient while C & D’s litter used baking soda. In Clorox’s test, 11 panelists gave a malodor rating of zero to cat excrement treated with carbon in sealed jars but found that baking soda reduced odor only 32%—the same decrease represented in the demonstration shown in Clorox’s commercial.

Necessary Implication of Falsity

The commercial was literally false because the “jar test” could not reasonably support the necessary implication that Clorox’s litter outperformed C & D’s products in eliminating odor, the court determined. The test was unreliable because its unrealistic conditions said little, if anything, about how carbon performs in cat litter in circumstances highly relevant to a reasonable consumer, and it could not possibly support Clorox's very specific claims with regard to litter, according to the court.

Another reason given by the court for rejecting the test results was the implausible uniformity with which panelists found that cat excrement treated with carbon contained “zero” malodor. When 11 panelists stick their noses into jars of excrement and report 44 times that they smelled nothing unpleasant, the result more likely reflected flaws in their in-house training or objectivity than any reliable result, the court said.

Irreparable Harm

C & D proved a likelihood of irreparable harm. One of the beakers in Clorox's commercial bore the label “baking soda,” and C & D was the only major manufacturer of cat litter that used baking soda as a deodorizing ingredient. Consumers shopping for cat litter overwhelmingly identified baking soda with C & D’s Arm & Hammer cat litter products, according to the court.

The court concluded that the comparisons were at least as direct as those in Time Warner Cable, Inc. v. DIRECTV, Inc. (CCH Advertising Law Guide ¶62,620), where the court found that viewers of a DIRECTV commercial that disparaged “cable” in an area in which Time Warner served as the exclusive cable provider would “undoubtedly understand” that criticism to apply to Time Warner specifically.

The January 4 opinion in Church & Dwight Co. v. Clorox Co. will be reported at CCH Advertising Law Guide ¶64,533.