Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Nurofen pain relievers in a Sydney pharmacy. An Australian court has fined British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser $1.7m for misleading customers about its specific pain range.
Nurofen pain relievers in a Sydney pharmacy. An Australian court has fined British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser $1.7m for misleading customers about its specific pain range. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
Nurofen pain relievers in a Sydney pharmacy. An Australian court has fined British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser $1.7m for misleading customers about its specific pain range. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters

Nurofen manufacturer fined $1.7m for misleading customers

This article is more than 7 years old

Reckitt Benckiser says it did not intentionally mislead about tablets targeting different types of pain

Nurofen manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser has been fined $1.7m for misleading customers about its range of specific pain products, which were marketed as targeting different types of pain despite containing the same active ingredient.

Judge James Edelman ordered the penalty in a judgement delivered in the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday after making the ruling of misconduct in December.

It was substantially less than the $6m penalty demanded by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, who told the court earlier this month that there needed to be “some serious taking away of product” for misleading consumers over a health product.

ACCC Chairman, Rod Sims, on Friday said they had argued for a higher penalty “to send a strong deterrence message and due to the longstanding and widespread nature of the conduct and the substantial sales and profit that was made by selling the product.”

Sims said the maximum penalty of $1.1m per contravention of Australian consumer laws was “arguably inadequate for very large companies” and the ACCC was advocating for penalties to be increased as part of the Australian Consumer Law Review.

In his judgement, Edelman said that while Reckitt Benckiser’s conduct was designed for profit he couldn’t quantify how much of that profit came from consumers being mislead. He also said that customers potentially suffered financial loss by paying more for the specific-pain products, they were still effective painkillers and did not cause any physical harm.

In a statement, Nurofen said it accepted the judgement but maintained it did not intend to mislead consumers, saying its specific pain range was “introduced with the intention to provide easy navigation of pain relief options, particularly within the grocery environment where pharmacy support is not available”.

“Nurofen did not intend to mislead consumers, however we recognise that we could have done more to assist our consumers in navigating the Nurofen Specific Pain Range,” it said, echoing comments made in response to the first Federal Court ruling in December.

“In 2015, Nurofen accepted that the representations made on the Nurofen Specific Pain Range webpage and packaging may have misled consumers, and at that time Nurofen consented to the court orders.”

Nurofen said it should have made it clear to consumers that all products in its specific pain range were equally effective; that is to say, none were more effective on a certain type of pain than any other.

All products in that range contain 342mg of ibuprofen lysine – a different formula of ibuprofen than is used in the standard, cheaper, Nurofen products.

The company removed the products from shelves in response to the first court order and replaced them with interim packaging.

The consumer group Choice said the fine was manifestly inadequate.

“These massive global companies should be made to pay fines that fit the crime,” its spokesman, Tom Godfrey, said in a statement.

“A $1.7m fine is nothing compared to the profit Reckitt Benckiser would have made from tricking customers into paying a premium for products that weren’t any more effective than cheaper generic pain relief pills. Even the highest available fine under the law would have only been $6m, which is pocket change for these giant companies,” Godfrey said.

In the review of consumer law later this year Choice would be calling for changes so that courts could hand down fines that matched the size of the company and the seriousness of the behaviour, he said.

Explore more on these topics

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed