ATLANTA (CN) — A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a pharmaceutical company's motion for relief from a $40 million contempt judgement to the Federal Trade Commission for making repeated false assertions about the efficacy of its weight loss supplements.
In 2017 a federal judge ordered Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, a Georgia corporation that manufactures and sells dietary supplements, to pay the monetary relief for violating an injunction that banned it from making further claims about its supplements' efficacy without “competent and reliable scientific evidence” to back them up.
The injunction was issued against the company nearly 20 years ago along with an order to pay $16 million in equitable monetary remedies for false advertising and unfair and deceptive trade practices in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act.
Years later, the company sued the FTC, arguing that it shouldn't have to continue paying the $40 million contempt judgment due to a 2021 Supreme Court ruling in AMG Capital Management v. Federal Trade Commission, where the high court held that Section 13(b) of the FTC act does not authorize the commission to seek, or a court to award, equitable monetary relief such as restitution or disgorgement.
Based on that ruling, attorneys for Hi-Tech argued before a three-judge circuit panel in July that it was "inequitable" for the district court to enforce the contempt judgment and for the government to retain funds collected but unclaimed by consumers.
But the...
You are reading the second issue of the Disinformation Monitor. It is published on a monthly basis and provides an overview of developments on the disinformation scenes on NATO’s eastern frontier....