LA Fitness To Settle Membership Scam Class Action Lawsuit

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A settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit accusing LA Fitness of scamming consumers into extending their memberships, according to documents filed last week in California federal court.

On Sept. 8, plaintiff Beau Briones notified the court that the case had been resolved through settlement. The terms of the proposed LA Fitness class action settlement have not yet been disclosed.

U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton ordered a stay in the litigation until the settlement agreement becomes final.

She said that the class action lawsuit will remain open until parties file a stipulation of dismissal by Oct. 24, 2016.

If the parties do not file for dismissal by this date, the matter will be dismissed, according to the judge’s order.

If approved, the proposed LA Fitness settlement will resolve a class action lawsuit filed in January by Briones, who claims LA Fitness tricked him into signing up for another year of payments when he tried to terminate his membership with the gym.

According to the LA Fitness class action lawsuit, Briones notified the gym that he would not renew his membership when it expired in November 2014. He says he succumbed to “high-pressure sales techniques” when he agreed to sign up for an additional month of membership for $140.

Briones says an LA Fitness sales representative had him sign his name on an electronic device that displayed only a signature line with no other information.

The signature page reportedly did not contain any information indicating he was authorizing the gym chain to automatically deduct funds from his bank account to pay for an additional year of membership.

The LA Fitness class action lawsuit indicates Briones paid $2,860 for a year-long gym membership even though he did not authorize the payments.

Briones says he was informed he could only cancel the membership agreement if he became disabled. It was not until he confronted LA Fitness about the allegedly unauthorized debits that he was presented with a copy of the membership agreement, according to the class action lawsuit.

Briones seeks to represent a Class of LA Fitness members whose bank accounts were regularly debited by Fitness International LLC without their authorization.

In August, Judge Staton denied a bid by LA Fitness to handle the matter in arbitration after finding the gym chain failed to show that Briones agreed to the arbitration clause, or that the arbitration clause in the original membership agreement signed by Briones applied to future claims.

Top Class Actions will post updates to this class action settlement as they become available. For the latest updates, keep checking TopClassActions.com or sign up for our free newsletter. You can also receive notifications when this article is updated by using your free Top Class Actions account and clicking the green “Follow Article” button at the top of the post.

Briones is represented by Todd M. Friedman, Adrian R. Bacon and Thomas Edward Wheeler of The Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman PC.

The LA Fitness Membership Scam Class Action Lawsuit is Beau Briones, et al. v. Fitness International LLC, et al., Case No. 8:16-cv-00044, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.