On August 2, 2019, a group of dissatisfied customers filed a motion for class certification in federal court in the Eastern District of Illinois. Plaintiffs are seeking a 17-state potential class action against cosmetics retail giant Ulta Beauty.
Named plaintiffs in the suit include Kimberly Laura Smith-Brown and an additional 19 other women from various states who alleged that Ulta Beauty has an undisclosed corporate-wide policy of taking previously returned and used beauty products, retouching them to look new, comingling them with new products and reselling them. Plaintiffs argued that not only are Ulta’s actions unsanitary but it also reduced the value of all its products, whether new or used. In the complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that had they known that the products they were purchasing as new were actually used they would not have paid the full retail price or not purchased the products at all.
The suit is seeking to represent a class of all persons who purchased (other than for resale) used beauty products from Ulta stores in Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin. The class period is listed as the date that the named plaintiffs filed suit to the date that a judgment is entered.
The case is: Kimberly Smith-Brown v. Ulta Beauty Inc. et al., Case No.: 1:18-cv-00610, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
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