Book buyers were duped into purchases, class action suit claims!

The Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, August 18, 2000
By Linda Loyd Staff Writer

Margaret Kelly doesn't believe in ghosts - or false advertising.

Kelly, a fan of best-selling mystery writer Lawrence Sanders, has filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court contending that a major New York book publisher deceived buyers into believing Sanders wrote a recent installment in his series about ace sleuth Archy McNally.

The proposed class-action lawsuit filed this week says that Sanders, who wrote 34 novels and other thrillers before he died in 1998, had nothing to do with McNally's Dilemma, published in July 1999 - yet the novelist's name is splashed in big print on the book cover.

Inside the copyright page reveals in tiny print that the publisher and Sanders' estate chose Vincent Lardo to ghostwrite the book, according to the lawsuit.

Kelly, 54, a licensed practical nurse in Melrose Park, "felt duped," said attorney Thomas More Marrone, who, with partner Alan M. Feldman, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Kelly and Pennsylvania consumers. Kelly, reached at home, would not comment.

The lawsuit alleges deceptive and misleading advertising and asks the court to order publishers Penguin Putnam Inc. and G.P. Putnam's Sons in New York to give refunds to unhappy readers and to pay unspecified damages.

Also named as a defendant is Amazon.com Inc., which allegedly represented the book as written by Sanders on its Web site, where Kelly bought the book for $22.45 in December.

Not long after McNally's Dilemma was published, the book was ranked a bestseller on the Publisher's Weekly hardcover-fiction list, according to the lawsuit.

Robert Cavosi, Penguin Putnam's manager of corporate communications, said the lawsuit in Philadelphia follows two class-action suits filed in New York and California.

"We have reached comprehensive settlements in the new York and California class-action suits, which will provide reimbursement opportunities for purchasers of the hardcover edition of McNally's Dilemma nationwide," Cavosi said in a prepared statement.

"Specific details about the settlement will be advertised in several major national newspapers in the next several weeks," he said.

Cavosi said last month's release of the paperback edition of McNally's Dilemma and the latest hardcover title, McNally's Folly, a new detective mystery published last month, "clearly identify Vincent Lardo as the author on the book jacket and spine."