SC Johnson, maker of Drano, Pledge and other household products, is threatening to sue Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter for citing the company’s slogan in the state’s opioid lawsuit against an unrelated, yet similarly named, Johnson & Johnson.
“I am writing to demand that you retract your statements that have appeared in both national and local media citing the SC Johnson tagline, ‘A Family Company.’ If you do not, we will have no choice but to bring suit,” Johnson CEO Fisk Johnson said in a letter to Hunter released Tuesday.
S.C. Johnson says that even after it wrote the Oklahoma AG to warn him he was quoting the wrong company’s slogan, he went on national television and repeated the talking point.
Not to say anyone should be suing over this, but if AG Hunter didn’t know the difference between New Jersey-based pharma giant Johnson & Johnson, which he was suing for $ billions, and Racine, Wis.-based S.C. Johnson, the family-owned Johnson’s Wax company, it kind of makes my point about the demagogic populism fueling these cases. [earlier] And maybe also my point about how the private trial lawyers on contingency fee, whose expectation for a multi-billion-dollar payday will have to be met if the mass litigation is to settle, are the real brains of the opioid-suit operation.
One Comment
I can see why SC Johnson is angry! I’d be angry too. There’s a real danger the Twitter mobs will get their pitchforks and torches out over the wrong Johnson. I hope than can sue, and win!