Purell Lawsuit

Two class action lawsuits have been filed against GOJO, the maker of Purell hand sanitizer. It says the company makes “misleading claims” that their product can prevent “99.9 percent of illness-causing germs.”

The most recent suit was filed in the Northern District of Ohio on March 13th. It represents four individuals located in four different states, Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon and California. This Purell lawsuit is seeking damages for every consumer who has ever bought Purell and “relied upon the product’s packaging and marketing materials” to make an inference about their purchase.

Highlighted in the complaint are a number of statements used on Purell’s labels and the defendant’s website. It states that the product is “intended for reducing or preventing disease. The FDA reportedly had warned the company that the product was marketed as an unapproved new drug in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

The lawsuit argues Gojo’s claims as to Purell’s effectiveness in killing “99.99%” of most common germs and combating Ebola, the flu, the common cold, norovirus, MRSA and VRE, and Candida Auris are backed by no credible scientific studies that link killing skin bacteria to preventing such conditions.

Previous Lawsuit

A separate Purell lawsuit was filed last month in the same federal court by different plaintiffs. That suit states that the manufacturer “has broken the public’s trust” by repeatedly marketing unsubstantiated claims, NBC reports.

In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to the maker of Purell warning it against making unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness of its products.