Products Liability
According to new research from NIH, using chemical hair relaxers like Dark & Lovely can increase the risk of uterine cancer, uterine fibroids, and other hormone-related conditions. Dark & Lovely relaxer is manufactured by L’Oreal. The new evidence has led to product liability lawsuits against L’Oreal and other cosmetic companies, alleging that their products caused uterine cancer and other injuries.
This page will review the evidence linking Dark & Lovely to uterine cancer and the Dark & Lovely hair relaxer lawsuits against L’Oreal. Our law firm is handling Dark and Lovely lawsuits in all 50 states.
January 2024 Dark and Lovely Lawsuit Update
Lawsuits involving Loreal and Dark and Lovely have proceeded through the MDL class action in 2024. There are now 8,000 hair relaxer lawsuits in the MDL.
So when will there be a Dark and Lovely settlement or a trial? The truth is, we are probably looking at 2025 before we get to our first hair relaxer settlement.
About L’Oreal
Headquartered in France, L’Oreal is the largest cosmetics manufacturer in the world, with product sales and locations across the globe. Our lawyers did not fully appreciate the size and scope of L’Oreal until the hair relaxer litigation began. There is no question that the sheer size of L’Oreal – worth nearly $300 billion – is why you see so many hair relaxer lawsuit commercials. Successful litigation like this has a strong case of liability against the defendant and a defendant with the resources to pay settlement amount and jury payouts without going into bankruptcy.
Let’s go back to the L’Oreal story because it is interesting. L’Oreal was started by a French chemist who patented a hair dye product in the early 1900s. L’Oreal grew slowly at first, and by 1950, it had only 100 employees and mainly made hair dye products. As the personal cosmetics market evolved, the company proliferated in the following decades. Today, L’Oreal has over 500 brands and 85,000 employees across the globe.
The L’Oreal parent company is a French corporation that does business worldwide through many international subsidiaries. L’Oreal USA, Inc., headquartered in New York City, is the biggest L’Oreal operating subsidiary covering the U.S. and South America. Although L’Oreal is a publicly traded company, most of the company’s stock is owned by a small group of institutional investors.
With a current market capitalization of $189 billion, L’Oreal is one of the biggest companies in the world. In 2021, L’Oreal posted total revenue of $32.2 billion and a net income of $4.6 billion.
Dark & Lovely and Hair Relaxers
African American women use hair relaxers or hair straighteners to force their tightly curled hair to lay flat. Dark & Lovely is the leading brand of chemical hair relaxers in the U.S. today.
The Dark & Lovely hair relaxer line was initially developed in the 1970s by Carson Products. At the time, it was one of the first hair relaxer products that did not use lye, making it much less likely to irritate the scalp and cause less damage. Dark & Lovely quickly became the leading brand in the hair straightener market.
In 1998, Carson Products was acquired by L’Oreal. Two years later, L’Oreal acquired another leading hair relaxer company called SoftSheen, Inc. L’Oreal eventually combined the two companies and the Dark & Lovely product line into ShoftSheen-Carson.
Dark & Lovely May Cause Uterine Cancer
Dark & Lovely, like all hair relaxer products, uses a high dose of powerful chemicals. Many of the chemicals in Dark & Lovely are EDCs (endocrine-disrupting chemicals) that interfere with the endocrine system. The endocrine system is what makes hormones such as estrogen.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been conducting a major study over the last decade into risk factors for breast cancer. Know as the Sister Study, some of the study’s initial results were published on October 17, 2022, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The findings published from the Sister Study were groundbreaking. They showed a clear association between the use of hair relaxers like Dark & Lovely and higher rates of uterine cancer. Specifically, the risk of uterine cancer increased by 150% among women who reported regular use of relaxer products like Dark & Lovely. Chronic exposure to the chemicals in hair straightener products has also been linked to increased risks of other health conditions involving the female reproductive system, such as uterine fibroids and endometriosis.
Dark & Lovely Class Action Lawsuit
Almost immediately after the publication of the NIH Sister Study, hair relaxer product liability lawsuits against L’Oreal and other cosmetic companies started getting filed around the country. These hair relaxer lawsuits are being brought by women who have used Dark & Lovely for years and were diagnosed with uterine cancer or uterine fibroids. They claim that their injuries were caused by chemicals in the hair relaxer products.
The hair relaxer lawsuits accuse L’Oreal and other cosmetic companies of marketing their hair relaxer products as safe when they knew or should have known that they could potentially increase the risk of uterine cancer. On a more human level, women who wondered why they had these awful problems started putting the pieces to the puzzle together as to why this happened to them.
In November 2022, a group of hair relaxer plaintiffs filed a motion with the JMPL requesting that all hair relaxer lawsuits be consolidated into a new MDL class action. This motion will most likely be granted as thousands of lawsuits could potentially be filed against L’Oreal and other companies alleging that their hair relaxer products caused uterine cancer or other injuries.
Our lawyers expect a ruling on the hair relaxer class action soon. But it always does not matter. Now or later, there will be a hair relaxer class action lawsuit, and L’Oreal will have to answer for what chemicals are in its products.
Potential Settlement Payout for Dark & Lovely Lawsuits
Our hair relaxer lawyers estimate that a good Dark & Lovely lawsuit in which uterine cancer is the primary injury could have a potential settlement payout of $300,000 to $1.75 million. This estimate is purely speculative and based on several significant assumptions, including that the causation evidence will be admissible in court. We are also talking about cancer lawsuits, not other injuries that Dark & Lovely may have caused.
This is a wide settlement value range because uterine cancer cases can present a wide range of circumstances. If the plaintiff is older (post-menopausal), their case will have a lower settlement value because uterine cancer has a decent survival rate. If the plaintiff is younger, however, the case will have a much higher value because the treatment for uterine cancer often leaves them unable to have children, and the cancer itself tends to be more aggressive.
Dark & Lovely lawsuits involving other injuries, such as uterine fibroids or endometriosis, will have lower potential settlement value for two reasons. First, the causation evidence linking these injuries to hair relaxers needs to be more compelling. Second, these health conditions are not as severe as uterine cancer, which reduces their potential settlement value. That said, some of the strongest cases in terms of human suffering have been uterine fibroids claims and that reality will likely be reflected at some point in settlement amount for those types of claims.
Contact Us About Filing a Dark & Lovely Lawsuit Against L’Oreal
Our firm is currently investigating product liability cases alleging that chemicals in L’Oreal’s Dark & Lovely hair relaxer cause uterine cancer, breast cancer, and other conditions. If you think you qualify for a lawsuit involving chemical hair straightener, contact our office today for a free consultation at 800-553-8082 or contact us online.