WEN Hair Loss Lawsuit Information
Everything You Need to Know About the WEN Hair Loss Lawsuit:
The WEN Hair Loss Lawsuit refers to a series of lawsuits against the WEN hair care brand. These lawsuits allege that certain products lead to hair loss.
WEN and Hair Loss
The WEN lawsuit is related to the long-circulating rumor that certain WEN products lead to hair loss.
WEN is a haircare product brand created by Chaz Dean. One product in particular, WEN Cleansing Conditioner, is especially under fire.
According to some customers, WEN products like the Cleansing Conditioner have led to hair loss described by Snopes as “unusual and alarming”.
Some of these users claimed that they continued losing their hair even after they stopped using WEN products.
Posts started to appear on Facebook and Twitter in February 2015. Many of these posts were circulated by hair salons and hairstylists. Plenty of them referred to an August 2014 announcement of a class action lawsuit against WEN.
The problem with these posts is that they were listed in such a way as to convince people they were occurring in real time. In reality, the news was over a year old.
Today, the original WEN hair loss lawsuit is nearly 2 years old. However, a new lawsuit involving 200 women was launched in November 2015 – which means that the case against WEN is still very active.
What is the WEN Hair Loss Lawsuit?
The original WEN hair loss lawsuit is a class action lawsuit filed against hair care product manufacturer Guthy-Renker LLC.
That lawsuit was filed in a California courtroom on July 31, 2014 and alleged that WEN Cleansing Conditioner hair products led to hair loss. This hair loss is alleged to have continued even after users stopped using the product.
The plaintiff in this case was Amy Friedman, a Florida woman who purchased the WEN Cleansing Conditioner Sweet Almond Mint basic kit on January 29, 2014 for $29.95 after seeing advertisements for the product.
Two weeks after Amy started using the product, she began to lose “substantial and abnormal amounts of hair”, alleges the class action lawsuit.
Friedman stopped suing the product, although the hair loss “continued for approximately three more weeks.”
Before the hair loss stopped, Amy claims she had lost one quarter to one third of the hair on her head.
Case Update in March 2015
In March 2015, a separate WEN hair loss lawsuit started to emerge. In March, a Dallas attorney named Amy Davis announced that she was representing six women who were all suing Chaz Dean and WEN over hair loss purportedly caused by WEN products.
One of the plaintiffs in this case, Cindy Peterson, claimed that she experienced rapid hair loss after using WEN products, but because her hair was so thick, she didn’t notice the loss right away. After using the hair care products in October 2014, Cindy claims the hair still hasn’t grown back. She ultimately lost one third of her hair.
Some of the other five women in this case claim they experienced bald spots after using the Cleansing Conditioner.
Said the Dallas attorney in this case,
“They feel like people are looking at them, wondering what's caused their hair loss. So women who used to enjoy time with family and friends out and about in social settings … they've become house-bound.”
Case Update in November 2015
Huge WEN news broke in November 2015, when 200 women across America joined a class action lawsuit against the company, claiming that WEN hair care products led to severe or even irreversible damage.
The plaintiffs live in 40 different states. They make most of the same claims made in other WEN lawsuits: after using WEN hair care products, plaintiffs noticed that chunks of their hair were falling out. There are numerous reports of bald spots and even some reports of skin damage.
In some plaintiffs, the hair has not yet regrown, leading some to assume that hair will never grow back.
Who Makes WEN?
WEN was a hugely successful brand line for Guthy-Renker. The Daily Beast reports that the company made $100 million in only its second year of selling WEN products – due largely to the successful TV advertising campaign.
WEN is endorsed and supposedly created by celebrity hair stylist Chaz Dean, famous for his organic philosophy and holistic lifestyle.
Dean claims that he started out as a hairdresser in Los Angeles and begun creating the WEN formula by mixing ingredients together in the sink. Prior to Alanis Morissette’s Grammy appearance in 1999, Chaz cemented his celebrity hair stylist status by applying his Sweet Almond Mint Cleaning Conditioner to Alanis’s hair.
Dean has also appeared on shows like Flipping Out and Celebrity Apprentice.
Is There Any Evidence Behind These Cases?
In the first class action lawsuit, lawyers were reportedly going to conduct chemical testing on WEN products to determine the ingredient profile that led to hair loss.
There was never a publically-announced follow-up explaining that testing.
At the same time, follow-up lawsuits have never specifically mentioned an ingredient that makes WEN more dangerous, more caustic, or more toxic than other shampoos.
Amy Davis, the Dallas attorney mentioned above, however, believes the connection is related to the fact that the Cleansing Conditioner actually contains very little cleanser. She claims that it’s like using “lotion” to wash your hair, so instead of removing the product, rinsing off the product just causes it to become “impacted in your hair follicle.”
Women often lose hair for a variety of natural reasons – like aging, hormonal changes, or physical damage.
Until WEN lawsuits can definitively link WEN or its ingredients to hair loss, it may be tough for plaintiffs to win compensation from WEN.
WEN’s Cleansing Conditioner, by the way, is largely the same as other cleansing conditioners. Its first four ingredients listed are water, glycerin, cetyl alcohol, and cetearyl alcohol.
The only major difference between the Cleansing Conditioner and other products is that it doesn’t contain sulfates.
In any case, Guthy-Renker has categorically denied that its products are in any way defective or responsible for hair loss.
The WEN hair loss lawsuit is currently underway and will go through some major updates over the coming months. Stay tuned to keep up to date on everything you need to know about the WEN hair loss lawsuit.
Hopefully in due time we will find out if there is a real ingredient in WEN products that is causing hair loss, or if these women are trying to look for a payout.
