Visit to local fitness center turns into a legal workout
Credit card mess prompts reservist to sue
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
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A $5 workout at a Houston fitness center still has a Beaumont military reservist sweating four years later as he fights a credit card mess on the home front while fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a lawsuit filed late last month in Beaumont, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Bryan Lawson alleges that an employee of Bally Total Fitness Corp. used credit card information he provided for the guest workout to sign him up for a three-year contract to the Houston fitness center 100 miles from his home and thousands of miles from where he was stationed.
The lawsuit names Bally and American Express Travel Related Services Co. as defendants, and seeks $250,000 in damages alleging deceptive trade practices, fraud, civil conspiracy, libel and breach of contract.
Both companies said they thought they had resolved the matter and had removed the charges that Lawson disputes.
The problem began in early 2003, shortly before Lawson's unit deployed to Uzbekistan, when he used a Bally fitness center while visiting his daughter in Houston.
Lawson paid $5 for a day pass. But not long after he was shipped overseas, his wife, Holly, found a $150 charge on their American Express bill and immediately disputed it, the lawsuit alleges. The charges kept mounting while she continued to dispute them and the companies investigated.
The following year, Bally and American Express sent the debt to collection agencies, and the credit card was canceled.
The lawsuit details Holly Lawson's attempts to get the problem fixed, erase the debt and stave off debt collectors while her husband served in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Qatar and Iraq.
While home on leave in 2004, Bryan Lawson went to the Houston club and tried to resolve the problem in person without success, the suit alleges.
As recently as March, the Lawsons have received demands for $2,715 from a credit agency claiming it is collecting on a contract originally made with Bally Total Fitness, their Houston lawyer, Millard Johnson, said.
The lawsuit alleges the debt collectors called the Lawson home many times, sent numerous demand notices and called Holly Lawson at work.
Johnson said he's asking for $250,000 to make a point.
"If anyone had taken a reasonable look at this when Mrs. Lawson asked," Johnson said, "this never would have happened."
The lawsuit alleges that the contract is "completely fabricated," and contains the wrong signature, wrong address, wrong birthday, wrong driver's license number and wrong phone number.
The lawsuit does not name any collection agencies as defendants.
Bally and American Express have not yet filed responses with the court. But both said they didn't expect the litigation and thought they had resolved the problems with the Lawsons a year ago by erasing the allegedly improper charges from their books.
Bally sent Lawson a check for $225 to cover the down payment and first month payment charged to his credit card, company spokesman Matt Messigner said.
"We gave a full refund," he said. "I'm confused. I thought the matter was resolved."
American Express spokeswoman Molly Faust said the company offered last year to forgive the charge and delete reference to it from Lawson's credit report.
"We didn't receive a response," she said.
Johnson said the Lawsons didn't respond to that offer because they did not consider it adequate compensation for their trouble.
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