Kim Kardashian Sued Over "Cookie Diet" Tweets!

KimKCookieDocss

Once again, a headline I thought I'd never write.

On top of that, a press release I thought I'd never read:

Celebrity doctor and author Sanford Siegal, D.O., M.D., creator of the immensely popular Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® weight-loss approach and products, and Dr. Siegal's Direct Nutritionals, LLC, the brand's global distributor, this morning filed a lawsuit against reality TV personality Kim Kardashian over two statements they allege Kardashian made on her Twitter page on October 29, 2009. A total of four counts are contained in the complaint stemming from the following statements:

STATEMENT 1:

"Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet is falsely promoting that I'm on this diet. NOT TRUE! I would never do this unhealthy diet! I do QuickTrim!"

STATEMENT 2:

"If this Dr. Siegal is lying about me being on this diet, what else are they lying about?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't presume to question Kim Kardashian's medical opinion. After all, I'm no reality TV star, just a physician who's treated more than a half million overweight patients during a fifty-year medical career," said Dr. Siegal. "But when I saw her derogatory comments about my diet and my character, I knew we had no choice but to take action. Disparaging someone's product while surreptitiously hawking someone else's in the same breath is, to use Kim's words, 'not cool!'"

Dr. Siegal went on to say that his diet is safe and that not one of the hundreds of thousands of patients whom he has treated with Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® experienced any significant problems.

"At 1,000 to 1,200 calories a day, Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet isn't even a VLCD, a very low calorie diet. It's actually a pretty mainstream approach that's safe, that works, and that many other doctors have used in their own medical practices," added Dr. Siegal.

According to Dr. Siegal's and DSDN's complaint filed in Florida's 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County, Florida, Case 09-93439CA15, Dr. Siegal recently received at his Miami medical clinic a letter from Kim Kardashian's attorney claiming that, by placing a link to a certain article stored on a third-party news web site on www.CookieDiet.com, which is owned and operated by Dr. Siegal's Direct Nutritionals, LLC, Dr. Siegal and DSDN had created the "false impression" that Kardashian was a paid endorser of Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® products. The letter demanded that the link to the story be removed from CookieDiet.com.

The complaint notes that Kardashian did not disclose in the Twitter message or "tweet" in which she called Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® "unhealthy" that she is a paid endorser of the other product that she mentioned in the same message.

Siegal's attorney responded to the letter by phoning Kardashian's attorney and explaining that the hundreds of news stories to which hyperlinks are displayed on the In the News section of CookieDiet.com were published and broadcast by legitimate, third-party media outlets and web sites, none of which are affiliated with Dr. Siegal or DSDN.

"Our attorney explained to Kim Kardashian's attorney that the news story to which he referred in his letter wasn't written by us. We had simply put a link to it along with all of our other press clipping links. What's more, the part of the story that mentioned Kim was comparatively brief. The story was substantially about us, not about her," said Matthew Siegal, president and CEO of Dr. Siegal's Direct Nutritionals, LLC.

Ok, by now I was very curious as to which South Florida attorney is handling this suit, so I sent one of my crack legal assistants to the courthouse, but as you know there's a little backlog in processing complaints and the suit is still in circuit court file limbo.

We have calendared to go back and check again in late 2012.

Luckily, thanks to the magic of the intertubes (Radar Online actually), I have managed to find a copy of the complaint and have posted it above.

Greg Anderson, wow!

If you read the blog give us a holler we'd love to do a brief interview.

The suit is pending before Judge Reyes.

(No word yet on who Kim has retained -- hint hint).