Montera v. Premier Nutrition Group

The judgment in a class action accusing an over-the-counter arthritis pain medication of false advertising isn't as much as the plaintiffs' team hoped for. But what's important about the jury's verdict in their favor is that it fulfills the mission of consumer-protection laws, they say.

The verdict provides "a disincentive to companies who want to defraud their consumers," said lead class counsel Timothy G. Blood of Blood Hurst & O'Reardon LLP. "It's very much fulfilled that policing mechanism the statutes are intended to provide."

Eugene G. Iredale

In this case, the company is the dietary supplement maker Premier Nutrition Corp. and its glucosamine-chondroitin joint-pain product Joint Juice. "The stuff does absolutely nothing," Blood said.

He compared glucosamine and chondroitin to "snake oil," and he has been battling its makers for a decade. He filed a national class action against Joint Juice in 2013 that eventually was split into a number of state-level cases. The jury's verdict came in a case for New York plaintiffs under New York consumer protection laws. Montera v. Premier Nutrition Corp., 3:16-cv-06980 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 5, 2016).

The litigation "followed the ebbs and flows of the jurisprudence on the federal level" on class actions, he said.

Arthritis pain also ebbs and flows, which is one reason glucosamine-chondroitin products are popular, Blood said. Sufferers take it when their pain is high, the pain subsides, so they believe the medicine works. The real reason is that arthritis pain is cyclical, he said.

Grace Jun

Some early studies by manufacturers showed the product is effective, but large, well-done studies have proved it is no better than a placebo. Blood's expert during the two-week trial, a Tufts University rheumatologist, conducted one of those high-quality studies.

Premier's defense presented the company founder as a well-intentioned doctor interested in helping people, according to Blood, which he called a smart strategy. Jessica Grant, Premier's lead attorney, said she could not comment on the case.

The plaintiffs' attorneys countered by showing that the founder was making lots of money with his publicly traded company.

Although the jury found for the plaintiffs, it only awarded about $1.49 million in actual damages. Instead, Blood asked for statutory damages of $50 for each of the 166,249 units of Joint Juice sold during the class period according to New York's deceptive practices law and $500 per unit under its false advertising law -- for a total of about $91.4 million. Judge Richard Seeborg rejected the $500 request as disproportionate and "obviously unreasonable," but he did adopt the $50 scheme. He entered judgment for $8.3 million plus another $4.6 million in prejudgment interest. Both sides have appealed.

Blood is not deterred. He obtained a $50 million settlement from another manufacturer in late 2021, and he has a pair of Joint Juice cases lined up for trial in Alameda Superior Court soon.

-- Don DeBenedictis