Class Action: Cold-EEZE Is ‘Totally Ineffective’

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Cold-EEZE Cold Remedy Products do not “reduce the duration of the common cold,” as Cold-EEZE maker ProPhase Labs Inc. claims, according to a false advertising class action lawsuit filed in a California federal court.

Plaintiff James Loren Gibbs says that ProPhase Labs puts false claims on its Cold-EEZE Products when it says that the cold remedy products “reduce the duration of the common cold,” that they are “clinically proven to reduce the duration of the common cold by almost half,” that they reduce “the severity of cold symptoms: cough, sore throat, nasal congestion, post nasal drip and/or hoarseness,” that they are able to shorten colds, and are “clinically proven to shorten your cold by almost half.”

“The misrepresentations are false and misleading,” Gibbs says in his Cold-EEZE false advertising class action lawsuit. “None of the studies relied upon by Defendant demonstrate that Cold-EEZE is clinically proven to reduce the duration of the common cold or effective to reduce the severity of cold symptoms.

“More importantly, studies that have tested Cold-EEZE, including one partially funded by [ProPhase Labs], have concluded that Cold-EEZE is ineffective – it does not reduce either the duration of the common cold or the severity of its symptoms,” Gibbs explained further.

According to the false advertising class action lawsuit, The Quigley Corporation, which was the former owner of Cold-EEZE products, was part of a Consent Agreement in 1999 with the Federal Trade Commission over charges by the FTC concerning claims made about Cold-EEZE on the QVC cable network — that Cold-EEZE products are able to “prevent colds and reduce the risk of contracting pneumonia, among other things.

“Pursuant to the Consent Agreement, Quigley agreed to stop making those representations,” the Cold-EEZE class action lawsuit states.

Gibbs claims in his false advertising class action lawsuit that he purchased Cold-EEZE lozenges for about $6 from a local Walgreens, relying on the product’s claims that it would “shorten” his cold.

Cold-EEZE also sells an oral spray and “quickmelts” that “are essentially the same product delivered in different forms,” which includes a formulation of the active ingredient zinc gluconate.

He says that inside the product’s packaging there was also an insert from ProPhase Labs’ CEO Ted Karkus stating that “Cold-EEZE is the right remedy to shorten your cold, I guarantee it!”

According to the false advertising class action lawsuit, “even though Plaintiff Gibbs used Cold-EEZE according to the directions for use on the back of the package, Cold-EEZE did not perform as advertised. In fact, it was totally ineffective.”

One study cited in the Cold-EEZE class action lawsuit was done in 2000, in which “the authors found that Cold-EEZE ‘had no effect on the duration or severity of symptoms in either the experimental or natural study model’ and ‘zinc compounds appear to have little utility for common-cold treatment.'”

While ProPhase Labs claims that there are clinical studies to support its claims about the Cold-EEZE products, Gibbs says that the studies cited “are unsound” and were “not independent.”

Gibbs is looking to represent a class of anyone in California “who purchased Cold-EEZE for personal or household use.”

The Cold-EEZE class action lawsuit it charging ProPhase Labs with breach of express warranty, breach of implied warranty of merchantability, violating California’s Legal Remedies Act, California’s False Advertising Law, and violating California’s Unfair Competition Law.

Gibbs is represented by L. Timothy Fisher, Annick M. Persinger and Yeremey O. Krivoshey of Bursor & Fisher PA.

Counsel information for the defendant was not immediately available.

The Cold-EEZE False Advertising Class Action Lawsuit is Gibbs v. ProPhase Labs Inc., Case No. 3:15-cv-00865, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.