NEW YORK, Aug. 17, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Justice for the consumers nationwide who were affected by deceptive billing practices by Noom, Inc. – the provider of a subscription-based app for tracking food intake and exercise habits – moved closer to trial when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sustained 274 class action counts against the popular startup. The class-action lawsuit is valued at more than $100 million.
Judge Lorna Schofield denied Noom’s multiple requests for dismissal and allowed the lawsuit – filed by Armonk, New York, based law firm Wittels McInturff Palikovic (WMP) to proceed. The lawsuit alleges that Noom’s app-based dieting platform engaged in an automatic renewal scheme that duped vast numbers of customers nationwide. In the ruling, Judge Schofield upheld WMP’s argument that “at a minimum, each plaintiff went through Noom’s 58-step sign-up flow and relied on information in that process to form a reasonable belief that they were signing up only for a trial period and not recurring charges.”
“This suit will prove that Noom engaged in one of the largest auto-renewal scams in American history,” said Steven Wittels, partner with WMP. “Consumers were led to believe that they were enjoying a free trial period but instead were charged for an entire year’s worth of service. To make matters worse, Noom failed to provide any reasonable way to cancel or get a refund.”
The suit further alleges that consumers were unaware that they would be charged nonrefundable fees as high as $199 for a multi-month diet program they never wanted or used.
Noom recently received $560 million in venture funding from a who’s who of VCs, including Sequoia Capital, Silver Lake, and WTA star Serena Williams. Despite the outpouring of complaints by consumers and employees about the company’s shady business practices, Noom is barreling forward with a planned IPO led by Goldman Sachs scheduled for early next year.
“Sequoia, Serena, Silver Lake, and Godman Sachs are supposed to be the adults in the room,” said, said Burkett McInturff, partner with WMP. “Instead, they are fostering Noom’s deceptive billing practices, enabling them to prey upon massive numbers of vulnerable Americans who trusted Noom’s supposedly different approach to weight loss and better health.”
The lawsuit details how Noom’s growth tactics involve a fraudulent sign-up process that deploys a web of underhanded tricks to dupe consumers into inadvertently incurring charges.
A copy of Judge Schofield’s ruling and the Class Action Complaint can be obtained by contacting kevin@propheta.com.
About Wittels McInturff Palikovic
Steven L. Wittels, named a “Super Lawyer” nine years running (2013-2021) for his class-action litigation success, is a nationally recognized class-action attorney who concentrates on consumer fraud, civil rights, and general public interest cases. The firm represents victims of consumer fraud, employment discrimination, labor and wage violations, predatory lending, whistleblower retaliation, mass torts, and other wrongdoing. Mr. Wittels was a lead trial counsel in the largest employment class action ever tried to verdict in New York, which resulted in a $253 million jury award against Novartis. Co-counsel Tiasha Palikovic and J. Burkett McInturff are both rising stars in the class action arena, having obtained settlements for victims of consumer fraud and employment discrimination totaling more than $100 million in the past four years.
