Class Action: Benefits of Peter Thomas Roth Beauty Products Based on ‘Pseudo-Science’

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

In a lawsuit recently removed to federal court in California, two consumers allege Peter Thomas Roth’s Rose Stem Cell and Water Drench lines of beauty products are falsely advertised and “scientifically incapable” of achieving promised benefits for which customers pay a premium price.

According to the lawsuit filed against Peter Thomas Roth, LLC and three affiliate companies, the Rose Stem Cell products, despite their purported ability to “repair, regenerate and rejuvenate skin,” provide no such benefits. The defendants’ marketing hinges on the alleged presence of rose stem cells, which the case asserts have never been proven to deliver the promised results even if they were, in fact, found in the products. From the complaint:

“While medical research has shown that human stem cells can provide tremendous health benefits to people under specific circumstances, there is absolutely no evidence that rose stem cells can provide such benefits. Plant stem cells cannot ‘repair,’ ‘rejuvenate,’ or ‘regenerate’ human skin, as Defendants claim. Nor can they ‘stimulate cellular turnover,’ as Defendants claim in their marketing video. Accordingly, Defendants’ representations are falsely [sic] and deceptive.”

The case further alleges that even if the stem cells were present in the products, they would be dead by the time customers applied them to their skin.

“Plant stem cells are fragile,” the case points out, “and cannot survive the manufacturing, shipping, and storage to which the Rose Stem Cell Products are necessarily subject.”

The lawsuit then sticks on the defendants’ Water Drench beauty line, which purports to provide moisture to users’ skin by drawing and retaining “large quantities of water from the atmosphere.” The defendants’ claims are allegedly based on the presence of hyaluronic acid in the products, which the company states is able to absorb “near 1,000 times its weight in water.” The lawsuit argues, however, that these representations are blatantly false, as the hyaluronic acid in the products is already saturated with water and is incapable of absorbing “anywhere near” the represented amount. Moreover, even if the hyaluronic acid were able to absorb more water, the complaint says, it would tend to draw water from the skin and not from the atmosphere, thereby “achieving the opposite effect as the company advertises.”

The plaintiffs argue that because of consumers’ interest in these kinds of beauty products, the defendants are able to charge “exorbitant amounts for their pseudo-science.”