A legal dispute involving Tahitian Noni and a California group over a hormone cream the Provo company claims treats menopausal symptoms, was recently settled.

Tahitian Noni paid $50,500 to the California Women's Law Center, a Los Angeles-based women's civil rights group, and its executive director, Katherine Lee Buckland, to settle a lawsuit alleging violations of California's health and safety codes and other consumer protection laws relating to unlawful competition and false advertising.

Tahitian Noni, in its settlement, agreed to add warning labels to its product -- the Tahiti Trim Plan 40 Body Balance Cream -- that states it contains progesterone, "a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer" and should only be used with a physician's advice.

According the National Cancer Institute, a large clinical trial published in 2002 showed that hormone replacement therapy (a combination of the hormones estrogen and progesterone) increased women's risk of developing breast cancer and heart disease.

But these cancer warnings will only be added to Body Balance Cream products sold in California. That's because California has Proposition 65, a state law that requires companies to provide warning labels if their products contain chemicals that can cause cancer and birth defects.

Michael Drake, assistant general counsel for Tahitian Noni, said the company isn't required to provide cancer warnings on hormone creams sold in Utah or elsewhere.

"The consent judgment has to do with labeling requirements in California. We just need to adjust our product labeling in California," he said.

Mike Weingarten, global public relations manager for Tahitian Noni, declined to comment on the number of Body Balance Cream products sold annually in Utah and nationwide.

Roger Carrick, lead attorney for the California group, said Utahns should call on their federal and state regulators including the Attorney General's Office and request similar cancer warnings in Utah.

Carrick said the FDA has not recognized the cream as safe or effective. But the product is still advertised as a way to ease menopause symptoms and is sold mainly in stores and on the Internet.

Still, scientists are divided over the role of progesterone in cancer risk.

Paul Murphy, spokesman for the Attorney General's Office in Utah, said he couldn't specify immediately what steps would be taken by the government. "A private lawsuit against a single company isn't likely to force the government to act," he said.

With the passage of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which is co-authored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the burden of showing whether a drug or a supplement was unsafe is now placed on the federal Food and Drug Administration, rather than on the company.

"We hope the FDA will take the cream off the market. We filed the lawsuit after the California Women's Law Center, while working with breast cancer victims, found these hormone cream products were being sold," said Carrick, who believes that thousands of women used the product in California.

The settlement, approved by California Superior Court Judge Robert Hess last month, is one of 50 reached to date since the California non-profit filed suit in 2005 against 60-plus companies nationwide that made similar products with hormones. Tahitian Noni settled without admission of guilt.

One other Utah company, Basic Research doing business as Klein-Becker USA, was also sued over claims it made about its sexual appetite and performance enhancing product, TestroGel.

The FDA, in a warning letter issued January 2005, said TestroGel is "not generally recognized as safe and effective." The Salt Lake City company is still in litigation with the group.