The Latest Beauty Lawsuit Targets Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe Kardashian (and It’s a Big One)

Oh boy, we’ve got another major beauty lawsuit to start keeping up with. Hot on the heels of legal scuffles involving Wen hair care, Eos lip balm, and even extra-innocent-seeming Johnson’s baby powder, the latest beauty brand set to enter the courtroom is part of the Kardashian empire. Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian are being hit up for more than $200 million for not promoting the Kardashian Beauty makeup line on social media—and, in fact, actively trying to sabotage it. Allegedly.

What?! Well, we need to start by backing up a bit. This isn’t the first lawsuit the sisters have faced in their quest to profit in the cosmetics space. They originally launched their makeup line in 2012 under the name Khroma Beauty, partnering with a company called Boldface. They were promptly sued by the owner of a high-end Beverly Hills makeup studio named Chroma and by a Florida woman who’d trademarked the name Kroma for her own makeup line in 2004. In response, Boldface changed the name to Kardashian Beauty and eventually settled those suits after years of legal drama and related legal clashes with the Kardashian sisters.

Sales of Kardashian Beauty products—sold at Ulta—suffered amidst this upheaval, according to a TMZ report, and a management firm called Hillair Capital Management stepped in, buying out Boldface in 2014 and chipping in $10 million to save the makeup line. Now Hillair is claiming the Kardashian sisters haven’t held up their end of the bargain by promoting Kardashian Beauty products to their massive followings on Twitter and Instagram (Kim Kardashian, for one, currently has more than 64 million Instagram followers, compared to Kardashian Beauty’s 554,000). It’s asking for up to $180 million to make up for lost potential sales, plus the original $10+ million investment.

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“In short: the Kardashians wanted a better, more lucrative deal than they had struck with Hillair after the money to continue the line was already committed, and they used their ability to withhold their support of the line to attempt to force Hillair into a buyout of its interest,” reads the lawsuit paperwork filed in Los Angeles yesterday, obtained by the New York Daily News. The text also alleges that Khloe Kardashian “publicly disparaged” the brand bearing her name at a beauty exhibition in Dubai last year, when she loudly announced that “she hated everything about the Kardashian Beauty products and appearance,” and takes issue with Kim Kardashian for lending her name to a new Charlotte Tilbury lipstick shade, called Kim K W.

We’ve reached out to Kardashian Beauty for comment and will keep you posted on the next interesting happenings in this latest case involving the sisters’ makeup line. Meanwhile, ICYMI, read up on the surprising new twist in the lawsuit against Wen hair care.

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