Buena Vista Publishing Sued Over $20

Staff -- Library Journal, 1/11/1999

America's love-affair with silly lawsuits shows no sign of abating in 1999. Word comes that a Greenwich, CT, woman has filed a lawsuit against the Buena Vista Publishing Group, Inc. in hopes of regaining the $20 she paid for one of its titles. Cheryl Lacoff asserts that the volume, Beardstown Ladies Common Sense Investment Guide falsely promised that readers "could get a 23-plus percent annual return if you followed the advice in the book," said her lawyer, Oliver Koppell. Lacoff wants the publisher, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., to refund her $20 as well as the $20 of the other 800,000 purchasers. The suit asserts that an independent audit revealed that using the methods professed in the book would yield only a 9.1 percent return. Buena Vista would not comment on the pending litigation.