THE PLAIN DEALER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1990

Suit seeks refunds for Ohioans who bought Milli Vanilli album

By ULYSSES TORASSA
STAFF WRITER

A local law firm wants Milli Vanilli to set the record straight with thousands of Ohio music lovers.

Invoking a state consumer protection law, lawyers Patrick J. Perotti and Howard S. Rabb filed a class action yesterday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court seeking to force the group and its producers to refund the purchase price of its 1988 album "Girl You Know It's True.' The duo last week admitted they did not sign a note on the album, which won them the 1989 Grammy for best new artist. The award has since been rescinded.

The suit charges would-be singers Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, their producers and Arista Records with deceptive sales practices because Pilatus and Morvan were billed as the lead vocalists 'when in fact they were not and did not sign a word on the album."

'This is something that has infuriated a lot of people," Perotti said. "We're going after the people who put this whole thing together and who, as far as we can tell, knew about this false information."

Perotti said his law firm, Dworken & Bernstein, was representing a Cuyahoga County woman who bought the album. He said they wee taking a "reasonable" approach by seeking only to get consumers' money back, along with lawyers' fees.

"We're not trying to claim compensatory damages or anything big and expansive," he said. "We want to get a simple order that any person in the state who bought the album should be allowed to get their money back."

Perotti said he did not have an estimate of how many Ohioans bought the multimillion-selling album, except that it was well over 1,000.

The lawsuit is at least the second filed against Milli Vanilli and its producers since news broke that the pair did nothing more than dance and lip-sync to the music. A California mother whose son had bought the group's album filed suit Monday charging fraud and negligent misrepresentation.

Perotti said he expected similar suits to be filed against the group in other states that have similar consumer protection laws covering deceptive sales practices.