Kardashian sued over Cookie Diet remarks

MIAMI, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. physician, author and weight-loss expert Sanford Siegal says he is suing TV's Kim Kardashian for remarks she made about his Cookie Diet.

Siegal, creator of the Cookie Diet weight-loss approach and products, and his Direct Nutritionals LLC, the brand's global distributor, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Florida's 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County.

The court papers claim statements Kardashian, a reality television personality, allegedly made on Twitter in October could ultimately cause Siegal and his company tens of millions of dollars in damages.

The lawsuit quoted Kardashian as Tweeting: "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!" and "If this Dr. Siegal is lying about me being on this diet, what else are they lying about?"

Siegal said he received a letter from Kardashian's attorney alleging that by placing a link to a certain article stored on a third-party news Web site on www.CookieDiet.com, Siegal and his company had created the "false impression" Kardashian was a paid endorser of Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet products.

Siegal said his attorney notified Kardashian's lawyer that news stories to which hyperlinks are displayed on CookieDiet.com were published and broadcast by legitimate, third-party media outlets and Web sites, none of which are affiliated with Siegal or DSDN.

Siegal's lawsuit claims Kardashian didn't disclose in the Twitter message in which she called the Cookie Diet "unhealthy" that she is a paid endorser of the other product she mentioned.

"When I saw her derogatory comments about my diet and my character, I knew we had no choice but to take action," Siegal said in a statement. "Disparaging someone's product while surreptitiously hawking someone else's in the same breath is, to use Kim's words, 'not cool!'"