Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Many people are on the look-out for a quick fix to lose weight and get in shape. It is therefore no surprise that hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of Skechers’s offer when they introduced shoes that claimed to help people lose weight and tone up.
Skechers’s ads featured celebrity endorsers such as Kim Kardashian and Brooke Burke. The shoe company claimed that its Shape-Ups were designed to promote weight loss and tone butt, leg, and stomach muscles with the shoe’s curved “rocker” or rolling bottom. Skechers said that this caused instability which would cause the wearer of the shoes to “use more energy with every step.” Shape-ups cost about $100 and are sold across the country.
The Resistance Runner shoes were advertised as a fitness tool that could help people who wore them increase “muscle activation” by up to 85% for posture-related muscles and 71% for muscles in the buttocks.
The current lawsuit against Skechers consolidates more than 70 lawsuits from across the country into one lawsuit in federal court in Louisville, Kentucky. U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell recently approved the settlement reached between Skechers and the plaintiffs for $40 million. The judge also ordered Skechers to pay an additional $5 million for the attorneys in the case to share. Russell ordered that the money cannot come out of the $40 million settlement.
The two lead plaintiffs in the case will receive payments of $2,500 each.
Those with approved claims will be able to collect repayment for their purchase – up to $80 per pair of Shape-Ups; $84 per pair of Resistance Runners; up to $54 per pair of Podded Sole Shoes; and $40 per pair of Tone-Ups. The settlement covers more than 520,000 claims. About 1,000 people who are eligible for coverage by the settlement opted out.
Eleven objections to the settlement were filed, including people seeking the full purchase price of their shoes and one person saying the settlement would prevent him from seeking damages on his own. The judge rejected all of these arguments.
The settlement comes just one year after Skechers reached a deal with the Federal Trade Commission regarding the ads. A settlement with the Federal Trade Commission bars Skechers from ever again running the ads. If there is any money left over from the $40 million after all of the claims have been processed, the judge has ordered that the remainder of the money is to go to the Federal Trade Commission.
Skechers denies the allegations but said that it is settling in order to avoid a long and costly litigation.
Our Chicago class action attorneys have brought class action cases involving mass consumer product defects, false advertising and failure to honor warranties similar to the claims in this case. We are looking for new class actions to pursue involving defective products. Contact us if you feel you have a claim at our toll free number 630-333-0333 or filling out an online contact form.
Our Chicago consumer rights private law firm handles individual and class action unfair debt collection and other consumer fraud cases that government agencies and public interest law firms such as the Illinois Attorney General may not pursue. Class action lawsuits our law firm has been involved in or spear-headed have led to substantial awards totalling over a million dollars to organizations including the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Consumer Law Center, and local law school consumer programs. Lubin Austermuehle is proud of our achievements in assisting national and local consumer rights organizations obtain the funds needed to ensure that consumers are protected and informed of their rights. By standing up to consumer fraud and consumer rip-offs, and in the right case filing consumer protection lawsuits and class-actions you too can help ensure that other consumers’ rights are protected from consumer rip-offs and unscrupulous or dishonest practices.
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