Procter & Gamble

PROCTER & GAMBLE (P&G) has been accused since 1980 of associating with the devil. Problems over their man-in-the-moon and stars trademark surfaced in that year when people began calling the company to ask if it was owned by the followers of[Page 636] Reverend Sun Myung Moon. The company responded to this assault by writing to news organizations in the Midwest, the origin of most of the telephone calls.

The emphasis of the rumors changed from Moon's church to Satanism, and December 1981 brought the company 1,152 questions/comments on the subject. Tales spread of Procter & Gamble's owner admitting on television that he had traded his soul to the devil in return for the company's success, and the company president announcing on the Phil Donahue Show that 10 percent of their earnings went to a Satanic religion.

The rumors did not die despite a second mailing, this time to the West Coast, statements by Procter & Gamble executives on television shows, and clarifications of the fact that P&G is a corporation and thus profits go to shareholders, not any individual who could send them to a religious group. In the spring of 1982, P&G reportedly was contacted 12,000 times per month regarding its relationship with the devil. Because of indications that some clergy were urging their congregations to boycott P&G products, the corporation sent letters to clergy. These letters contained support for Procter & Gamble from well-known clerics including Reverend Jerry Falwell, leader of the church-based Moral Majority.

By June 1982, more than 15,000 inquiries were made regarding the trademark, and in July, P&G, which produces over 70 household products including Tide, Folgers Coffee, and Oil of Olay, filed lawsuits in an attempt to control these widespread rumors which could potentially cost the company customers, sales, and loss of profit. Most of these defendants sold products, including Amway and Shaklee, which compete with P&G's products. The suits brought publicity and perhaps some understanding by the public because inquiries to P&G dropped by half. By 1990, Satan-related queries were again spiking and the corporation filed its 13th suit charging defendants with spreading false and malicious statements.

In 1995, P&G filed its 15th suit, this time against a Texas Amway distributor who repeated the rumor in a voicemail available to other distributors for a fee. The basis for this suit was that it violated the Lanham Act, a federal law protecting companies from unfair competition in many forms, including misleading representations in commercial advertising. In 1995, P&G named Michigan-based Amway, not just its distributors, for the first time in a suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah.

In August 2000, the Denver, Colorado, federal appeals court dismissed the Utah suit against Amway but revived previously dismissed cases against some of its distributors. In 2001, the federal appeals court in New Orleans, Louisiana, revived the suit against Amway based on the 1970 federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and sent it back to Texas for retrial. In January 2003, a federal appeals panel in Utah, then a U.S. District judge in Texas, separately affirmed the lower courts' dismissals of P&G's suits against Amway. At that time, the Utah and Texas suits against Amway distributors were still unsettled. P&G won some suits, including gaining a 1991 $75,000 settlement from a Kansas couple who were Amway distributors.

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