Judge Limits Sales Pitches by Life Alert : Business: Temporary order follows lawsuit claiming that firm uses deceptive practices in selling emergency response system to elderly.

A preliminary injunction was issued this week against the makers of the Life Alert emergency response system, prohibiting the Chatsworth firm from using what consumer protection attorneys have described as deceptive sales pitches.

Life Alert is best known for its television advertisements depicting a gray-haired woman who has fallen down and moans that she can’t get up. In another, a man suffers a heart attack, alone in his garden.

Life Alert’s system includes a portable “help button” in a user’s home that triggers an electronic device on the telephone. That machine dials the Life Alert office in Chatsworth, where employees, in turn, contact emergency dispatchers.

In September, district attorneys from nine California counties, including Los Angeles, and the state attorney general filed a $2-million suit against the company. The suit was aimed not at the television ads but at the company’s high-pressure sales tactics, which it alleged unfairly coerced elderly and disabled people into paying up to $5,000 for the systems.

The suit was based on statements by about 40 former customers who complained that salespeople spent hours trying to scare them into buying the system and telling them that the company had better access to emergency dispatch systems than the public.

Since the suit was filed in September, the nine district attorneys have received at least 260 more calls from dissatisfied customers with similar stories, said Jeffrey Holtzman, deputy district attorney in Sonoma County, where the case is being heard.

But in their first public comments on the suit, attorneys for Life Alert said Friday that in most areas of the state, the company has access to different--though not necessarily faster--emergency lines than the public. These lines are designated for alarm companies, they said.

They said they were not certain if Los Angeles is one of the areas where they have that access.

“The main advantage is that Life Alert does not have to go through 911 . . . where all the congestion occurs,” said Robert Boyd, a Santa Rosa attorney. Holtzman praised Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Rex Sater for issuing the order, which Holtzman said “provided consumers with a number of important protections” while the suit is continuing.

The order, issued Wednesday, prohibits the company or its salesmen from making misrepresentations about Life Alert’s relationship to 911, from fabricating horror stories about victims of crime or medical emergencies, and from drawing out its sales presentations more than three hours without the customer’s written consent.

But Boyd and Granada Hills attorney Tamila Jensen said the injunction has little effect because the company was innocent of most of the things of which it was accused.

Boyd said he considers the injunction a partial victory for Life Alert because the district attorneys had sought to have the in-home sale sessions reduced to 90 minutes. The judge allowed three hours, plus an extra hour if the customer signs a release.

The lawsuit alleges that salespeople are taught to stay for hours. But Boyd and Jensen said the salespeople only stay as long as is necessary to answer all the potential customers’ questions and to work out details and record medical and emergency information.