RELATED: This Beloved Store Is Closing 65 Locations. Australian activewear company Lorna Jane has just been fined millions after claiming its clothes could prevent the spread of COVID. The company advertised that its clothing was treated with a substance they called LJ Shield, which they claimed could kill the virus. “LJ SHIELD is a groundbreaking technology that makes transferal of all pathogens to your Activewear (and let’s face it, the one we’re all thinking about is COVID-19) impossible by eliminating the virus on contact with the fabric,” the company wrote in an Instagram post, according to the prosecution. Best Life has reached out to Lorna Jane for a comment on the allegations but has not yet heard back. Lorna Jane was sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in Dec. 2020 for promoting its line of LJ Shield Activewear products as COVID blocking. On July 22, 2021, a federal judge ruled in favor of the ACCC and said the company must pay a $5 million fine in Australian dollars ($3.7 million U.S.). The ACCC said that Lorna Jane claimed there was “a reliable scientific or technological basis” for its claims, but the court found that that was not true. “The whole marketing campaign was based upon consumers’ desire for greater protection against the global pandemic,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said in a statement. “The $5 million in penalties imposed by the Court highlights the seriousness of Lorna Jane’s conduct, which the judge called ’exploitative, predatory and potentially dangerous.” RELATED: For more up-to-date information, sign up for our daily newsletter. Lorna Jane CEO Bill Clarkson accepted the court’s ruling and will pay the fine, but he maintains that this was a supplier-based issue. According to Clarkson, the company was misled by “a trusted supplier [who] sold us a product that did not perform as promised,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBB). “They led us to believe the technology behind LJ Shield was being sold elsewhere in Australia, the USA, China, and Taiwan and that it was both anti-bacterial and anti-viral. We believed we were passing on a benefit to our customers.“ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb Over 30 years ago, Lorna Jane was founded by Aerobics instructor Lorna Jane Clarkson, who claims to have invented the term activewear. “Since coining the term Activewear, Lorna has spent three decades learning, evolving, listening and leading the way in product design and the normalization of wearing Activewear everywhere,” the Lorna Jane website states. According to the lawsuit, Lorna Jane has 108 retail stores in Australia, but the activewear brand also has stores in the U.S., New Zealand, Singapore, the U.K., France, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia. Stateside, the company has stores in California, Texas, and Washington. Lorna Jane also sells its products through its online store, as well as through Kohl’s. RELATED: If You Bought This at Walmart, Throw It Away Immediately, FDA Says.
