Church & Dwight Co. v. The Clorox Company
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
840 F. Supp. 2d 717 (S.D.N.Y. 2012)
Church & Dwight's (plaintiff) baking-soda-based cat litter competed against Clorox's (defendant) carbon-based litter, and Clorox aired a commercial showing lab beakers where green gas dissipated over carbon but lingered over baking soda; Clorox's supporting "jar test" sealed cat waste with either carbon or baking soda in jars for 24 hours, after which panelists rated the carbon jars as having zero odor across all trials while rating baking-soda jars as having some odor. C&D, the only major litter maker using baking soda, sued for false advertising under the Lanham Act and sought a preliminary injunction, arguing the ad implied a broader superiority claim the jar test couldn't actually support.
Whether a company's advertisement demonstrating a narrow, laboratory-controlled comparison between product components necessarily implies a broader claim about real-world product superiority that the underlying test does not actually support, constituting false advertising.