Kars4Kids, the charity known for its repetitive jingle that sticks like glue in a listener’s brain, must stop broadcasting its ads in California, a judge ruled.
Judge Gassia Apkarian of the Superior Court of California, in Orange County, found that Kars4Kids’s ads violated the state’s laws against false advertising and unfair competition.
For years, the charity has broadcast TV and radio ads featuring children singing a jingle with the organization’s phone number and urging listeners to “donate your car today.”
But evidence presented at a civil trial showed that “children, especially needy or underprivileged children,” were not the exclusive recipients of the proceeds of the donated cars, Judge Apkarian wrote in her decision on May 8.
Instead, Kars4Kids primarily funds a New Jersey-based Jewish organization, Oorah, which provides programs, including an adult matchmaking service, trips to Israel for teens and summer camps in New York, the judge wrote. The only program in California that Kars4Kids sponsored was a promotional giveaway of Kars4Kids-branded backpacks, she found.
Judge Apkarian said that Kars4Kids had 30 days to stop broadcasting its ads in California.
If Kars4Kids resumes advertising, she wrote, its ads must contain “an express, audible disclosure of its religious affiliation and the geographic location of its primary beneficiaries and the age of the beneficiaries, specifying whether they aim for children or families, or both.”
Kars4Kids, a nonprofit based in Lakewood, N.J., said it planned to seek a stay of the ruling and would seek to have it reversed on appeal.
“We believe this decision is deeply flawed, ignores the facts and misapplies the law,” the organization said in a statement. “It’s well known that we are a Jewish organization and our website makes it abundantly clear.”
Kars4Kids added that it helps “thousands of kids with youth development, mentoring and educational programs, including hundreds in the state of California, contrary to the judge’s complete mischaracterization of our work and of the testimony at trial.”
“Like many youth-serving organizations,” the statement said, “helping children often means engaging parents and families as well, and continuing support through young adulthood.”
The ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed by Bruce Puterbaugh, a California cabinetmaker in his 70s who had heard a Kars4Kids ad “over and over” on the radio and felt he had been misled by it after he donated a Volvo to the organization in 2021.
He testified that the ad led him to believe that Kars4Kids benefited “underprivileged kids” from around the country, including in California, the judge wrote. After donating the car, he learned from a neighbor that the proceeds would fund a Jewish organization based in the Northeast. Mr. Puterbaugh said he felt “taken advantage of.”
The judge admitted she had never heard the Kars4Kids ad until it was played in the courtroom, surprising one of Mr. Puterbaugh’s lawyer, Anthony G. Graham.
“Do you not have a television?” Mr. Graham asked, according to a trial transcript. Replied the judge: “Not the television I watch.”
But Judge Apkarian agreed that the ad was misleading, citing what she called “strikingly candid” testimony from the chief operating officer of Kars4Kids, Esti Landau.
According to the judge, Ms. Landau acknowledged that the 30-second ads, which have been running for two decades, do not “say anything” about the charity’s specific nature and do not mention the word Jewish, even though Kars4Kids is a Jewish organization.
Ms. Landau testified that Kars4Kids sends about $45 million a year, 60 percent of the money it raises, to Oorah, its sister organization, which operates out of the same office building in Lakewood, the judge said. Another 30 percent is spent on in-house advertising, and about 6 percent on administrative costs. Oorah has also spent money overseas, the judge wrote, including $16.5 million to buy a building in Israel.
Ms. Landau testified that while the children who benefit from the car donations come from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, Kars4Kids’s mission is to “help Jewish children and their families and provide them with the support they need throughout their life.”
Judge Apkarian found the ads violated California’s law against false advertising because they were “misleading by omission” and that Kars4Kids sought to make the jingle memorable through “extreme repetition, while simultaneously stripping it of all substantive facts.”
The ads also violated the state’s law against unfair competition, the judge wrote, because “the public is misled into believing donations aid underprivileged children in California, when in fact the funds primarily support a separate organization benefiting specific families in New York, New Jersey, and abroad based on religious affiliation.”
In addition to barring Kars4Kids from broadcasting the ads in California, the judge ordered the charity to pay Mr. Puterbaugh $250 for the fair-market value of the nonworking Volvo he had donated.
“This ruling reinforces a fundamental principle: charitable organizations cannot mislead the public to create one impression while concealing material facts from the donating public,” Neal Roberts, one of Mr. Puterbaugh’s lawyers, said in a statement. “Transparency and honesty matters, and donors have a right to know exactly who their contributions are benefiting.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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