Before Dr. Mehmet Oz entered the world of politics, he was known for speaking about health topics on TV, including his own show and as a guest on others.
But Oz, who has previously been a guest on the TODAY show, also found himself facing plenty of criticism from medical experts — and facing legal trouble — for his statements about dubious weight loss supplements.
Oz wears many hats: He’s a talk show host, past Senate candidate (who lost to John Fetterman in 2022), and now he’s President Trump’s nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The position requires confirmation from the Senate, with Oz’s first hearing before the Senate Finance Committee scheduled for Friday, March 14, 2025.
It won’t be his first time on Capitol Hill; Oz testified before Congress in 2014, where he faced tough questions from senators about claims made on his show — including those about diet pills.
Just a few years later, Oz was named as a defendant in a class action lawsuit related to the same dubious weight loss supplements. Contacted by TODAY.com, a spokesperson for Oz did not provide comment on the lawsuit, his claims about weight loss supplements, or how they may affect his work as head of CMS, if confirmed, and instead pointed to comments he made at the time.
Why was Dr. Oz sued?
According to the lawsuit, reviewed by TODAY.com, Oz was named as a defendant alongside several others, including supplement companies Labrada Bodybuilding Nutrition and Labrada Nutritional Systems, as well as the founder of those companies, Lee Labrada.
Companies that manufactured, distributed and sold the proprietary active ingredients for the supplements, Naturex and Interhealth Nutraceuticals, were also named as defendants — along with production companies and investors behind Oz’s show, Entertainment Media Ventures, Harpo Productions and Sony Pictures Television.
The complaint, originally filed in 2016, alleges all the defendants participated in fraud, deceit, suppression of facts, misrepresentation, unfair trade practices and false advertising. The Labrada defendants also faced breach of warranty allegations in the complaint.
According to the suit, the defendants made health and weight loss claims about supplements containing green coffee bean extract, raspberry ketones and Garcinia cambogia that were not true.
There’s no actual scientific evidence for those claims, which Oz should have known, the lawsuit argues. “As a renowned surgeon at Columbia University with specialized medical and scientific knowledge, Dr. Oz knew that the claims he was making about the supplements being ‘miracle fat busters’ were patently false or misleading consumers,” the complaint says.
“Dr. Oz concealed his fraud by affirmatively representing to consumers that he was giving his objective opinion about the products based on his specialized knowledge,” the suit continues.
A study that Oz used to back up the effectiveness of the weight loss supplements was later retracted by the journal that published it following an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, according to the complaint. Originally published in 2012, the study was retracted in 2014 because the sponsors of the study could not assure the validity of the data, according to the authors’ retraction note.
Additionally, the complaint alleges that, although Oz claims not to promote specific brands or make money from products on his show, he does “mislead the public about his sponsorships and affiliations with those in the supplement industry.”
For instance, while Oz did not mention a specific brand of supplement by name on his show, he did recommend consumers seek out products with “zero fillers, zero binder and zero artificial ingredients,” the lawsuit says. And, at the time, “zero filler, zero binder and zero artificial ingredients” was a specific marketing slogan that appeared on Labrada products, according to the complaint.
Oz said during the 2014 Senate hearing that he “never told (viewers) where to go to buy the products” he was talking about for ethical reasons. He also said on his show that any companies that use his image to advertise specific products “are stealing from you,” according to the complaint.
Each of the plaintiffs in the suit bought products after seeing the claims made on “The Doctor Oz Show” or on the product packaging, the lawsuit says.
What did Dr. Oz say about the weight loss supplements?
Oz claimed the supplements had weight loss benefits on his show.
For instance, he claimed that the green coffee bean supplements were “miracles in a bottle” and a “magic weight-loss cure” that can “bust your fat for good,” according to the complaint.
Separate from the class action lawsuit, claims Oz made on the show about these weight-loss supplements were the focus of an FTC investigation and lawsuit. (Oz was not named as a defendant in the FTC lawsuit.)
In 2014, the FTC sued a Florida-based company that used “bogus weight loss claims and fake news websites” to sell green coffee bean extract products, the press release explains. According to the FTC, the company used fake websites to advertise the supplements and push what the FTC called “phony claims.” The operation capitalized on statements made on the “The Doctor Oz Show,” even embedding a playable clip from the show on a website dedicated to selling the pills.
Most of the defendants in the lawsuit settled the charges in 2015 without admitting or denying the allegations, according to the joint stipulation. But the FTC won a summary judgment against the “pitchman” of the operation in 2016. And just this month, the FTC announced it’s sending more than $905,000 in refunds to consumers who purchased the green coffee bean products from the company.
This is an example of a phenomenon that Senator Claire McCaskill called the “Dr. Oz Effect” during the 2014 hearing. When a product is featured on his show, it “dramatically boost(s) sales and driv(es) scam artists to pop up overnight using false and deceptive ads to sell questionable products,” she said, per NBC News.
During the hearing, Oz noted that he sometimes used “flowery” and “passionate” language to appeal to his audience, and that others may use his words to sell dubious products.
“I concede to my colleagues at the FTC that I am making their job more difficult,” he said during the hearing.
But Oz said he stood behind the products he featured on his show. “I actually do personally believe in the items I talk about on the show,” he said, per NBC News. “I recognize that oftentimes they don’t have the scientific muster to pass as fact. I have given my family these products.”
What was the outcome of the Dr. Oz lawsuit?
Claims against Oz and the production companies, referred to as the “media defendants” in the lawsuit, were dismissed in March of 2020 as part of a settlement.
Their attorneys filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the case shortly after the case was first filed in 2016, but the court deferred hearing the motion until after discovery, according to Oz’s attorney’s office. Discovery was completed in 2020, which meant the anti-SLAPP motion would be heard.
A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a suit “brought by individuals to try to dissuade a critic from continuing to produce negative publicity,” I. Glenn Cohen, law professor and medical ethics expert at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy at Harvard Law School, tells TODAY.com.
A SLAPP suit typically doesn’t have merit, but causes a defendant to exhaust time and money defending the case. So, an anti-SLAPP statute is designed to make it easier to get the SLAPP case dismissed, Cohen says.
Rather than go through with the anti-SLAPP proceedings, the plaintiffs agreed to dismiss their claims against the media defendants as part of a settlement of the lawsuit, according to the attorney’s office representing the media defendants. Oz’s lawyers used a similar strategy when defending him in a lawsuit related to claims about olive oil in 2017. Those claims were also dismissed.
In the end, the settlement was not an adjudication of the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims, according to court documents, and Oz did not admit liability. Additionally, no money was paid by either Oz or his insurance company, Oz’s lead lawyer Chip Babcock confirmed to TODAY.com. (Babcock did not respond to further requests for comment.)
In a 2019 class action settlement, all claims in the lawsuit against Naturex were dismissed. As part of the settlement, without admitting any liability or wrongdoing, Naturex agreed to pay $1.3 million to cover $325,000 in attorney’s fees, $61,321 in additional costs, $5,000 in incentive awards to each of two plaintiffs and $7,500 in an incentive award to the third plaintiff. After those costs were covered, the remaining amount was put into a settlement fund for distribution to class members.
The company also agreed not to tell consumers that the green coffee bean extract product will help them lose weight without diet and exercise, and it agreed not to make claims that the product has weight-loss benefits that are not supported by clinical trials, according to settlement documents reviewed by TODAY.com.
Stacy Harrison, lead attorney for Naturex in the suit, declined a TODAY.com request for comment.
In 2021, the court granted Interhealth Neutraceuticals’ motion for summary judgment, resulting in the company being dismissed as a party and all claims against them being dismissed as well. (Attorneys for Interhealth Neutraceuticals also did not respond to TODAY.com’s request for comment.)
That left the Labrada defendants as the only remaining defendants. They settled the claims in January of 2023 and, as part of the settlement, the company agreed to pay $187,500 for attorney’s fees and at least one plaintiff $5,000 as an incentive award, according to court documents.
Labrada also agreed to pay $625,000 into a settlement fund, but it continues to deny the allegations in the lawsuit. The court determined two classes of people who could be eligible to receive some of that settlement: anyone in California who purchased either the Labrada Green Coffee Bean Extract or the Labrada Garcinia Cambogia product for personal or household use (not for resale) between Feb. 2, 2012, and July 15, 2022.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, as well as Lee Labrada, Labrada Bodybuilding Nutrition and Labrada Nutritional Systems, did not respond to requests for comment from TODAY.com.
The Dr. Oz “paradox”
Oz occupies a unique space in U.S. culture — and medical law.
“Not that many people promote health claims in the way Dr. Oz does and with the amount of scope that he does,” Cohen says. And the health claims Oz makes to such a large audience are treated differently by the law than, say, an individual doctor giving recommendations to a specific patient, he explains.
It’s a situation that media law expert Claudia Haupt refers to as “the Dr. Oz paradox.”
Within the confines of a professional doctor-patient relationship, the doctor’s free speech is essentially limited to make sure the patient gets good advice, Haupt, a professor of law and politics at Northeastern University, tells TODAY.com.
“But if professionals just give advice to the general public, outside of the professional relationship, they cannot be held liable for bad advice,” she explains. “In short, the law imposes liability for giving bad advice to one patient, while it permits giving bad advice to millions of YouTube or television viewers, which may result in significant physical harm.”
Oz may be the “most widely known licensed medical professional who disseminates health information to a large audience, but he’s not the only one,” Haupt continues. It’s now common to find advice from doctors on TikTok and YouTube, for instance.
But Oz is now poised to be a major part of the federal government and help steer the way it handles health insurance coverage. If confirmed, Oz will be at the helm of the country’s Medicare and Medicaid systems, which have not been the focus of his previous work, Cohen notes.
While in his media roles, Oz “raised the profile of many issues that connected with everyday Americans,” Cohen says. “But I think Congress should take a close look at some of the things he’s promoted and hear how he views them now in retrospect.”