LA Fitness Class Action Says Gym Membership Payments Taken Without Consent

A New Jersey man claims Fitness International LLC d/b/a LA Fitness has been fraudulently luring consumers into multi-month memberships with recurring electronic payments.

Plaintiff Wilson Garrido claims LA Fitness and its related companies have been duping consumers into signing up for fitness club memberships by falsely representing those memberships as being only one month long. The alleged scheme violates several California consumer protection laws, he argues.

Garrido claims an LA Fitness sales representative pressured him into signing up for eight sessions of personal training at a cost of $50 per session.

He says the representative told him he could renew this arrangement on a month-to-month basis and that unused sessions would roll over to the next month.

The plaintiff claims the representative took his signature using an electronic device with a stylus. The device’s screen showed only a signature line and did not provide any indication of what agreement the signature was related to, according to Garrido.

Garrido says he used only two sessions, then told his trainer he would not use the remaining six sessions. But after that, he claims LA Fitness started debiting $400 per month out of his bank account.

When Garrido called LA Fitness to dispute the charge, he was told that he had signed an agreement authorizing them to withdraw $400 per month from his bank account for a total of $4,800.

The plaintiff says he never even saw this agreement and certainly did not agree to it. He continued to dispute the charges with LA Fitness, but the company would not relent.

Garrido now alleges he relied on the sales representative’s original sales pitch, which gave him the impression he was signing up for only one month of training sessions for a single payment of $400. Had he known those statements were false, Garrido claims he never would have purchased the LA Fitness membership.

This LA Fitness class action lawsuit says the charges at issue violate the federal Electronic Funds Transfer Act.

The act requires businesses to get a consumer’s written authorization before making “pre-authorized” electronic withdrawals from their bank account. The business must provide the consumer with a copy of that authorization.

Commentary on this requirement by the Federal Reserve says the terms of the pre-authorized transfer must be “clear and readily understandable,” according to Garrido.

Garrido seeks to represent a plaintiff Class that would include all persons in the U.S. whose bank accounts were debited by Fitness International d/b/a LA Fitness within one year of the filing of this action, without the company having obtained a written authorization to make such financial transfers.

He is asking the court for an order that would require LA Fitness to run a corrective advertising campaign. He also seeks a damage award including punitive and statutory damages, restitution of funds to Class Members, and reimbursement of court costs and attorneys’ fees.

The plaintiff is represented by attorneys Todd M. Friedman and Adrian R. Bacon of the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman PC.

The LA Fitness Auto-Debit Class Action Lawsuit is Wilson Garrido v. Fitness International LLC, et al., Case No. 8:17-cv-00054, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

UPDATE: The LA Fitness Auto-Debit Class Action lawsuit was dismissed at the request of the plaintiff on April 5, 2017.