POM Wonderful's disease-cure juice ads — an FTC order, upheld on appeal

For years POM Wonderful marketed its pomegranate juice, blends and supplements as preventing or treating heart disease, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction, citing studies the company had funded. Its ads made a point of the research budget — which the FTC later turned against it: claiming 'tens of millions of dollars' had been spent 'tends to reinforce the impression that the research supporting product claims is established and not merely preliminary.'

In September 2010 the FTC sued, charging that the ads mischaracterized the science. David Vladeck, then head of the Bureau of Consumer Protection: 'Any consumer who sees POM Wonderful products as a silver bullet against disease has been misled.' POM's reply was defiance: the government 'is wasting taxpayer resources to persecute the pomegranate.' In 2012 the Commission ordered the company to support disease claims with randomized controlled trials.

POM appealed, and on January 30, 2015 the D.C. Circuit upheld the core of the order: the ads were deceptive, and a single randomized, controlled human clinical trial was a fair price for a disease claim. The court found the studies were 'referenced in a way that suggests they are convincing evidence of efficacy.' It struck down only the Commission's blanket two-trial rule and remanded. There was no fine — the price was the order itself and the five-year fight to keep it.