District attorney files $75 million civil case against Gold’s Gym of Oxnard

Posted November 5, 2013 10:35 pm by healthclubnews

The Ventura County District Attorney’s Office has filed a $75 million polite movement opposite Gold’s Gym of Oxnard, alleging a business is illegally profiting off members by creation it scarcely unfit to get out of gym contracts.

The DA’s bureau in a justice filings compares Gold’s Gym of Oxnard to a Eagles strain “Hotel California,” that warns: “You can checkout any time we like, though we can never leave.”

In further to millions of dollars in penalties, a bureau is seeking a permanent claim to stop purported bootleg business practices by owners Noel Thompson and his company, Body Shaping Gyms Inc., that does business as Gold’s Gym during 2251 E. Gonzales Road.

A decider postulated a DA a proxy confining sequence Friday that effectively keeps Thompson from transferring assets.

The movement comes 4 years after The Star began questioning consumer complaints about a gym. The Star reported that a 24-year-old Seabee was struggling to get a gym to stop pulling income from his bank comment after he was deployed to Afghanistan. Two years later, it reported a identical conditions involving a troops family a supervision changed to Virginia.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Karen Wold pronounced a stories held her attention.

“After reviewing a articles on a diagnosis of a troops personnel, we was really uneasy and began looking into a matter,” Wold said, adding that she expects businesses to yield deployed crew fairly.

Dozens of complaints also were collected by a Tri-Counties Better Business Bureau, and many went unanswered, officials said. The gym allegedly refused to yield an residence to send termination requests, charged bank accounts after contracts finished and unlawfully threatened collection actions.

Thompson’s lawyer, Mark Pachowicz, pronounced not all members have had difficulty canceling memberships.

“We’ve been operative with (the DA) for a year now, doing all we could to residence their concerns and to try and have a good operative attribute with them and sojourn a certain change in a city of Oxnard,” Pachowicz said.

The DA’s consumer intervention section has attempted to negotiate complaints with Thompson and his gyms given 1994 though claims it was catastrophic so it incited a matter over to a DA’s consumer insurance unit.

The DA’s bureau pronounced it did a four-year review that incited adult 30,000 violations, any carrying a intensity polite chastisement of adult to $2,500, for a probable sum of $75 million. Investigators pronounced they collected during slightest 19 statements from people who indicted Gold’s of wrong activity, and they available exchanges when people attempted to cancel memberships.

One person, a veteran, was henceforth infirm after an collision and a cadence and could no longer practice during a gym, according to a justice documents. He went to Gold’s in his wheelchair and gave it a minute from Veterans Affairs indicating he was disabled.

“The Gold’s Gym employees told me that minute from a VA was not a ‘doctor’s note’ and would not sufficient to cancel my membership,” he states in a stipulation trustworthy to a DA’s justice filing.

The male concluded to wear a notice handle and went to a gym accompanied by a DA questioner posing as his assistant, according to justice documents. His termination attempts were documented by a DA, and he eventually managed to cancel his membership.

Gold’s is an eccentric authorization located in a 10,000-square-foot trickery on skill Thompson owns, justice annals state. Gold’s Gym International is a apart entity that has “marginal oversight” of Thompson and leaves patron complaints to him, according to justice records.

The DA’s box accuses Thompson and his business of enchanting in anti-competitive, astray and wrong business practices.

The proxy confining sequence is in place until Nov. 15, during that time a justice will have a conference on extenuation an injunction.