P&G v. Amway
This article was originally published in The Rose Sheet
Executive Summary
Houston district court orders Procter & Gamble to pay approximately $500,000 in Amway's legal fees and costs following dismissal of the company's suit charging Amway distributors with defamation; P&G said the employees repeated rumors that Procter & Gamble supports the Church of Satan. A similar case in Utah was dismissed in March, with P&G ordered to pay fines to Amway for bad faith litigation (1"The Rose Sheet" April 5, 1999, In Brief). According to Amway, "in 1995, a few distributors learned of the rumor" falsely linking P&G to Satanism "and innocently repeated it to one another because they believed it was true." P&G, Amway continues, "ignored that the rumor had been started 15 years earlier by others and that for years Amway had tried to help P&G squelch" the story. A separate suit filed by Amway in a Michigan court charging P&G with spreading damaging rumors is ongoing (2"The Rose Sheet" April 19, 1999, In Brief)