Sexy Hair Will Pay $2.3M to Settle ‘Sulfate­-Free’ Shampoo Class Action

A $2.3 million class action settlement has been proposed to resolve claims that Sexy Hair Concepts LLC mislabels their shampoos as “sulfate-free.”

Sexy Hair Concepts LLC and retailer Ulta proposed the $2.33 million settlement under which will benefit more than 900,000 known Class Members who purchased the shampoo which was allegedly mislabeled.

Under the Sexy Hair class action settlement, consumers can submit a one-page Claim Form and recover around $6 per purchase.

Claimants for which proof of purchase cannot be confirmed will be limited to submitting a claim for two purchases, but consumers who are able to provide proof will be able to submit claims for each purchase they made.

Retail records will provide proof of purchase, meaning that the claim process will require less action on the part of consumers.

The defendants have agreed to use their records to provide notice to the estimated 900,000 consumers, who will receive a unique notice code or email. Claimants can then use this code or follow an email link to pre-populate their Claim Form with retail records.

The consumers in the Sexy Hair sulfate-free class action argue that the $6 payout is “substantial” considering that travel sizes of the shampoo retail for $5 and liter sizes of the shampoo retail for $15.

“In short, the parties have designed the settlement to ensure that substantial cash benefits are placed in the hands of class members,” the Sexy Hair shampoo sulfate-free class action states.

Under the Sexy hair class action settlement, the Class is defined as all consumers who have purchased any of the shampoo products since Nov. 19, 2002.

Should a final approval hearing be scheduled and the settlement approved, these consumers may be able to recover compensation for their purchases sooner rather than later.

Lead plaintiff Molly Crane filed the class action lawsuit in February 2017 claiming that Sexy Hair labeled their shampoo as sulfate-free and containing no salts when the opposite was true.

Crane says she purchased the shampoo from Ulta believing that the representations on the front of the bottle were accurate, but later learned from the ingredient list that the shampoo contained sodium sulfate as well as salts sodium chloride and ammonium chloride.

The defendants attempted to dismiss the Sexy Hair shampoo class action last year, but in October U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor stated that Crane had sufficiently argued that the large sulfate-free representation on the front of shampoo bottles was misleading.

The judge also found that Crane sufficiently claimed that she overpaid for the shampoo based on the tendency for sulfate-free shampoos to be more expensive.

Ulta and Sexy Hair claimed that Crane hadn’t sufficiently proven any deception, injury, or causation, but Judge Saylor said that reasonable consumers purchasing the products may be deceived or misled by “a large, unqualified, front­-of-bottle representation that the product was ‘SULFATE-­FREE.'”

Top Class Actions will post updates to this class action settlement as they become available. For the latest updates, keep checking TopClassActions.com or sign up for our free newsletter. You can also receive notifications when this article is updated by using your free Top Class Actions account and clicking the “Follow Article” button at the top of the post.

Crane is represented by Edward F. Haber and Patrick J. Vallely of Shapiro Haber & Urmy LLP, and Kenneth D. Quat of Quat Law Offices.

The Sexy Hair Shampoo Sulfate-Free Class Action Lawsuit is Crane v. Sexy Hair Concepts LLC, et al., Case No. 1:17-­cv-­10300, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

UPDATE: February 2019, the Sexy Hair shampoo class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim. 

UPDATE 2: On Sept. 21, 2019, Top Class Actions viewers started to receive checks in amounts up to $23.59 from the Sexy Hair Concepts class action settlement. Congratulations to everyone who filed a claim and got PAID!