Optavia Lawsuit: Auto-Renewal Class Action, FTC, and Settlements

An Optavia lawsuit filed in 2022 accuses the weight-loss company and its parent, Medifast, of secretly enrolling California customers in a monthly auto-renewal subscription called Optavia Premier. That case is the most active piece of legal trouble facing the brand, but it sits alongside a $3.7 million Federal Trade Commission penalty against a Medifast subsidiary, a website accessibility settlement, shareholder investigations, and continuing regulatory attention to how Optavia coaches advertise the income they can earn.

The Auto-Renewal Class Action

On April 1, 2022, California resident Jamie Zeller sued Optavia, LLC and Medifast, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The complaint says the companies used deceptive “dark patterns” to sign customers up for Optavia Premier, a recurring subscription that could cost up to $500 a month, without clear consent.¹

According to the complaint, the enrollment box on the Optavia website was pre-checked by default, so a customer had to actively uncheck it to avoid the subscription. California law requires businesses to obtain clear, affirmative consent before enrolling anyone in an auto-renewal plan.²

The suit also targets how the sales pitch worked outside the website. Optavia’s independent sales representatives, called coaches, were allegedly trained to describe purchases as one-time orders and were not trained to tell customers about the recurring monthly charges.³

What Customers Said Happened

The complaint groups the alleged conduct into a few patterns. Optavia is accused of failing to disclose, before checkout, that the subscription would continue until canceled, what the cancellation policy was, what the recurring charges would be, and whether prices could change. Post-purchase confirmation emails were, the plaintiffs said, confusing and did not clearly state that the customer was now on a recurring plan. And customers who tried to cancel or return products allegedly got the runaround, with charges continuing after cancellation attempts.¹

The complaint says Optavia Premier accounted for roughly 92% of the company’s total revenue, making the subscription program central to the business model.¹

Claims and Proposed Class

Zeller brought six causes of action under California law: violations of the Automatic Renewal Law, the Unfair Competition Law, the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, and the Weight Loss Contract Law, plus fraud and unjust enrichment.⁴ The proposed class covers all California customers who were auto-enrolled in Optavia Premier and charged at least one renewal fee within the statute of limitations.

Where the Case Stands

The federal docket for the case was terminated on May 30, 2025.⁵ Reporting from March 2024 indicates the claims were re-filed in California state court, so the underlying dispute continued in a different forum.³ As of early 2026, no settlement or final resolution has been publicly reported, and the case is still listed as active litigation.¹ No claims process is open to customers at this stage.

The FTC’s History With Medifast

In September 2012, the FTC charged Jason Pharmaceuticals, a Medifast subsidiary, with violating a 1992 FTC order that barred the company from making unsupported weight-loss claims. The agency said that starting in at least 2009, ads for the Medifast “5 and 1” plan claimed users would lose two to five pounds per week and that endorsers’ results were typical, without adequate scientific support.⁶

Jason Pharmaceuticals agreed to pay $3.7 million in civil penalties. The consent decree required that any future weight-loss or health-benefit claim be backed by competent and reliable scientific evidence, including at least one well-controlled human clinical study. The settlement was not an admission of wrongdoing.⁶

Medifast has since received two formal warning notices from the FTC. An October 2021 Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities cautioned the company that misrepresenting typical earnings, or failing to disclose conditions affecting income, is an unfair or deceptive practice. An April 2023 Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Substantiation reiterated that health and efficacy claims must be backed by competent scientific evidence.⁷ Notices do not themselves impose penalties, but they put the company on record as warned, which can raise the stakes for any future violation.

Coach Income Claims and MLM Scrutiny

None of the lawsuits or regulatory actions in the public record alleges that Optavia is a pyramid scheme. The company does operate as a multi-level marketing business, and the way its coaches present earning potential has drawn continuing attention from watchdogs.

Truth in Advertising (TINA.org) wrote to Optavia in December 2017 about what it described as false and unsubstantiated income claims. In 2023, as part of a broader review of 100 MLM companies, TINA.org notified Medifast that it had identified atypical income claims in the company’s marketing. In March 2026, the Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council issued a decision finding that Medifast had used atypical earnings claims to promote its business opportunity.⁷

Optavia’s own 2025 U.S. income disclosure statement shows what most coaches actually earn. About 23% of U.S. coaches earned nothing during the year. Another 10% earned $100 or less. Roughly 70% earned $1,000 or less for the whole year. Fewer than 1.5% earned more than $50,000, and just 0.15% earned over $200,000. The disclosure notes the figures do not account for business expenses coaches may have paid out of pocket.⁸

Website Accessibility Settlement

A visually impaired plaintiff, Blair Douglass, sued Optavia LLC in the Western District of Pennsylvania, alleging the company’s website was not usable with screen-reading software in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The case resulted in a class-wide settlement that required Optavia to make its website and any future digital properties accessible to screen-reader users within three years. The settlement was injunctive rather than monetary, so no payments went to affected users.⁹ A federal judge granted final approval on January 23, 2023.¹⁰

Shareholder Litigation

Medifast investors have also gone to court. A securities class action filed in March 2011 was resolved in the company’s favor in April 2013, after a federal judge in Maryland accepted the argument that financial restatements at issue stemmed from rapid growth and an auditing transition rather than fraud.¹¹

A newer round of scrutiny began after Medifast’s April 29, 2024 earnings report, when adjusted earnings of $0.66 per share came in well below the $0.80 Wall Street estimate and shares fell more than 22% the next morning.¹² Several law firms announced investigations into whether Medifast made false or misleading statements to investors, with at least one referencing a pending class action alleging federal securities law violations.¹³

1
ClassAction.org. Optavia Premier Customers Enrolled in Automatic Subscriptions Without Consent, Lawsuit Alleges
2
ClassAction.org. Zeller v. Optavia LLC et al., Complaint
3
Venable LLP. Plaintiffs Allege Autorenewal Violations
4
Dovel & Luner LLP. Zeller v. Optavia LLC et al., Complaint Filing
5
CourtListener. Zeller v. Optavia LLC, Docket
6
Federal Trade Commission. Subsidiary of Diet Plan Marketer Medifast Inc. to Pay $3.7 Million to Settle FTC Charges
7
Truth in Advertising (TINA.org). Medifast-Optavia
8
Optavia Media. Optavia 2025 U.S. Income Disclosure Statement
9
Optavia ADA Settlement. Douglass v. Optavia LLC, Settlement Notice
10
Mealey’s Litigation Report. Optavia Class Settlement Providing Digital Access to the Blind Approved
11
Medifast Inc. Medifast Inc. Announces Favorable Resolution of Securities Class Action Lawsuit
12
AccessNewsWire. Medifast Inc. May Have Committed Securities Fraud and Shareholder Investigation Announced
13
Levi & Korsinsky LLP. Medifast Inc. Class Action Lawsuit