The suit was filed on January 22 on behalf of a class of thousands of California consumers after Armstrong admitted to television host Oprah Winfrey that he used performance-enhancing drugs during his seven Tour de France victories. Five Northern California residents who purchased one or both of Armstrong’s books—It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life and Every Second Counts—sued the publishers for marketing as biographies predominantly works of “fiction.”
“The claim against the publishers is that at some point in time they knew or should have known that the books were lies,” said plaintiff’s attorney Kevin Roddy, a shareholder at Wilentz Goldman & Spitzer in Woodbridge, N.J.
