Thread: Personal injury lawsuit filed against Species Nutrition

Personal injury lawsuit filed against Species Nutrition
by Anthony Roberts

Earlier this week, a lawsuit was filed against Species Nutrition in Kings County court, of New York – a court that ranks among the top in the nation when it comes to average settlements for personal injury. The company itself, as well as owner of the company, Dave Palumbo, were both named individually in the lawsuit, along with Bodybuilding.com, Nutricap, and Bactolac (the distributor/retailer of the product in question, and the sites where the product was manufactured).



The lawsuit alleges near-fatal injuries – liver failure – sustained as a result of ingesting the Species Nutrition products “Lipolyze” and “Somalyze.”

The complaint is a few hundred pages long (most are about twenty pages or so), with thousands of paragraphs, citing numerous causes of action. Also included in the complaint is a comprehensive history of usnic acid products, direct quotes from Palumbo personally, a summarization of both Palumbo and his product(s),and facts detailing that what he is telling the public in the promotion of his products is in direct contradiction to what has been documented by medical experts.



There was no dollar amount listed in the complaint, as damages (the sum of money estimated to be the defendant’s liability in the case) cannot be actually set forth in the complaint itself, according to NY State law. After the filing stage, the complaint still needs to be served to Palumbo, at which point he has a limited time period to file a response (depending on the type of service). Typically, the Defendant can make a “Demand” for damages claimed, at which point the plaintiff will usually serve a response (i.e. “You’ve caused $5 million dollars of damage, pain and suffering, etc…to the plaintiff”).

The damages here are huge…in the millions. When you add up the medical bills surrounding a liver transplant, plus the care and medication, the price tag easily creeps into the $250,000 range. Now, factor in an estimated cost of $3k/month for continued medication and care (necessary with a liver transplant), and the damages ought to be in the millions without breaking a sweat. Of course, none of these necessary medical costs factor in the pain and suffering, punitive damages, and other . This case is easily going to be in the multi-million dollar range.

Species Nutrition is only worth about $300-400k (yearly net multiplied by a factor of 4-6x, which is the standard way to assess what a company would sell for), and only carries $1m worth of insurance.

source

Posted by Anthony Roberts on June 7, 2010



Sketching out the Species Nutrition lawsuit

As many of my readers already know, I’ve obtained a full copy of the Species Nutrition lawsuit. It’s important to remember that I am not a lawyer, and although I have quite a bit of experience navigating legal issues in the nutritional world, I have forwarded a full copy of the lawsuit to some legal eagles, and am awaiting their analysis of the situation. What follows, however, is a simple F.A.Q. of exactly what the lawsuit is claiming and/or alleging.

Q: Who is being sued?
A: Species Nutrition is what I’d call the primary defendant. In addition to Species, Dave Palumbo, the owner, is being sued individually. Bodybuilding.com is being sued (for selling the product), Maria Krinis (the person who sourced the usnic acid for Species/Dave) is being sued along with the company she works for, Amfora Life Essentials. Finally, Bactolac and Nutricaps are both being sued as well, for handling the manufacturing of the product. In short, the sinking ship that we know as Species Nutrition, is taking literally everyone else down with them, from top to bottom.



Q: Can they really sue Dave Palumbo as an individual?

A: Dave is Species Nutrition – there is no defacto separation between him and his company. As I recall, Dave purchased a booth at the Phoenix Pro Bodybuilding show for Species, then used the all-access passes from that booth purchase to shoot videos for his other business, RxMuscle.com - this is one of the ways where it can be shown that Species is simply another name for Dave Palumbo himself, and not a separate corporate entity.


Q: What happened?

A: As a result of ingesting two Species Nutrition products, the plaintiff, who had no preexisting medical history of liver problems, suffered life threatening liver failure.



Q: Does the lawsuit mention Dave Palumbo’s past criminal history?

A: Yes.


Q: Is there any prior history of Species Nutrition selling products that contain ingredients banned by the FDA?
A: Yup. And so did Bodybuilding.com.


Q: Are Dave’s ties to Muscle Insider mentioned?

A: Yes.



Q: Did the label mistakes on the bottles come out in the lawsuit?

A: Yes.


Q: Was Dave Palumbo aware of the potential liver problems associated with usnic acid?

A: Yes.