Court Upholds Huge Damages Verdict Against ViSalus
8/20/2020
August 20, 2020 -- A federal judge recently upheld a $925 million judgement determined by a jury in April 2019 in a class-action lawsuit brought by a former ViSalus representative.
The class-action suit argued that the nearly 2 million prerecorded "robocalls" placed by ViSalus to potential customers violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Each violation called for a $500 penalty under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
Attorney Benjamin G. Shatz, representing ViSalus, wrote to the court that "ViSalus is in no position to pay any eight-digit judgment. ViSalus is not Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, or Google. It is a small direct sales company that sells nutritional supplements and weight loss products. It has no hard assets; all it possesses is a network and a brand." He requested that the court reduce the damages to less than a dollar per call.
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon dismissed the ViSalus argument, writing in his opinion, “ViSalus’s understanding of the limitations on damages imposed by due process implies that a constitutional penalty for a single violation becomes unconstitutional if the defendant commits the violation enough times.”