Steve Garvey, a former first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, his management company Garvey Management Inc. and three others are being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly making false and misleading statements in an infomercial for a weight-loss program.
Also named defendants in the suit are the infomercial’s producer, Modern Interactive Technology Inc., and its two principals, Mark Levine and David Richmond.
Garvey, Levine and Richmond could not be reached yesterday for comment about the lawsuit which the FTC filed in U.S. District Court, Los Angeles, last Friday seeking court orders against continued deceptive advertisement for the dietary program and refunds for consumers who bought it.
In that lawsuit, Garvey, and Lark Kendall, who appeared in the infomercial with him under the name of Kendall Carson, a nutritionist, are alleged to have known that the statements they were making about the weight-loss program, called the Enforma System, were false and misleading.
Last April Enforma Natural Products Inc., Andrew Grey, its president/CEO, and Fred Zinos, former vice president, sales and marketing, resolved the agency’s lawsuit against them for making unsubstantiated claims about their dietary program for $10 million. Most of the money will be used to pay refunds to consumers who purchased the program as a result of the infomercial.
The FTC suit also alleges that Levine, Richmond, and their company were “instrumental in writing, editing and producing” the infomercial which falsely portrayed Kendall as a nutritionist.
Earlier Kendall reached an out-of-court settlement reached with the FTC in which she agreed to stop misrepresenting her professional status as a nutritionist and making false claims for any health or weight-loss program.
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