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The sellers of the bogus weight loss drug Body Enhancer have had their fines reduced by the High Court.
Zenith Corporation and its directors, Winston and Sylvia Gallot, were ordered to pay $632,500 in fines and $130,000 in costs after being convicted in Auckland District Court in 2005 of breaching the Fair Trading Act.
The case was brought by the Commerce Commission.
In a sentencing decision released in July 2006, Zenith was also ordered to spend about $30,000 on a nationwide campaign of corrective advertising.
Zenith and Winston Gallot appealed to High Court against conviction, the fines imposed, the order as to costs, and an order for corrective advertising.
But the High Court, in a decision issued this week, dismissed the appeal against conviction.
Justice Pamela Andrews allowed the appeal against sentence to the extent that the fines imposed, $632,500, were quashed and replaced with fines totalling $394,500.
She dismissed the appeal against the costs' order but quashed the order that Mr Gallot publish a corrective statement.
She said the district court judge did not have the jurisdiction to order both Zenith and Mr Gallot to publish corrective statements, the order could only be made against one or the other.
Sold by mail order, Body Enhancer cost about $80-90 for a 480ml bottle.
At the District Court hearing in 2005, Judge Lindsay Moore said that Zenith sold between $7 million and $9 million of Body Enhancer between March 2000 and December 2002, resulting in a "ball park" gross profit of about $5 million.
Zenith had claimed Body Enhancer was scientifically tested.
That testing was carried out by Raukura Hauora O Tainui, a Maori health care organisation, but it did not follow normal clinical practice and the judge found the testing did not prove Body Enhancer worked.
- NZPA
