Federal Trade Commission v. Trudeau, 708 F. Supp. 2d 711 (N.D. Ill. 2010)
primary document · 2010
LINK
SUMMARY
District court opinion on remand from the Seventh Circuit, entering a compensatory sanction of $37,616,161 against Kevin Trudeau for consumer losses caused by the deceptive Weight Loss Cure infomercials, representing the cost of the book plus shipping and handling paid by consumers who ordered it via the toll-free number shown in the infomercials. Case identity, docket (No. 03 C 3904), judge, and decision date confirmed directly via the CourtListener case-law database's search API (2026-07-10; cluster/opinion id 2540537; citations '708 F. Supp. 2d 711', '2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37924', '2010 WL 1541366'). The $37,616,161 figure is independently corroborated by an FTC brief in opposition to Trudeau's petition for certiorari (ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/120823_trudeaubrief.pdf), which states the district court ordered this exact sum as a compensatory civil-contempt sanction; that PDF was downloaded but not machine-readable in this run (no PDF text extractor available on the runner), so its wording is treated as a lead confirming the figure rather than a verbatim-quoted source.
NOTES
This remand opinion is the case’s clearest single disconfirmation data point: a specific, court-ordered monetary judgment tying a dollar figure directly to consumer harm from the Weight Loss Cure infomercials, imposed after the Seventh Circuit had already affirmed the underlying contempt finding. Cited for the sanction amount, the procedural history (contempt finding, appeal, remand), and the extension of Trudeau’s reporting and compliance obligations for a further ten years.