The U.S. Supreme Court won't hear Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals' challenge to the Federal Trade Commission's $40 million judgment against it for misrepresenting weight-loss drugs and violating an injunction.

The justices' decision not to grant Georgia-based Hi-Tech's certiorari petition likely marks the end of a decadeslong fight between the FTC and the pharmaceutical company. In 2008, the district court overseeing the FTC's case granted the commission's injunction request prohibiting Hi-Tech from claiming that their supplements caused substantial weight loss without scientific evidence. The court also ordered the company to pay $15.8 million.

But six years later, in 2014, U.S. District Judge Charles A. Pannell Jr. found the company in contempt for violating the 2008 injunction, ordering an additional $40 million in sanctions against the company and a recall of four falsely advertised products.

The judgment was affirmed by the circuit court in 2019, but in 2021, Hi-Tech found a new angle to contest the judgment after the Supreme Court issued its ruling in AMG Capital Management LLC v. FTC. Hi-Tech argued that the penalty should be nullified because the justices had curbed some of the FTC's authority to win monetary penalties in district court without an administrative proceeding first.

Last year, the Eleventh Circuit rejected Hi-Tech's appeal because it was brought over a district court's contempt finding, not the underlying FTC order. The appeals panel wrote that the AMG Capital decision "did not concern a district court's ability to enforce its own orders and thus had no bearing on the contempt sanctions at issue."

In December, Hi-Tech CEO Jared Wheat and Senior Vice President Stephen Smith made one final appeal to the high court, claiming that a circuit split over AMG Capital's holdings justified a hearing before the justices.

"The court should hold that AMG Capital's reasoning — that the FTC Act precludes the commission from skipping administrative proceedings to obtain equitable monetary remedies directly in court under Section 13(b) — applies equally in the context of remedying contempt of a Section 13(b) permanent injunction," the company wrote in its petition.

In its response brief, the commission argued that, as the Eleventh Circuit had already ruled, the AMG Capital decision doesn't apply to district court judgments for contempt.

"As a practical matter, petitioners' position would deprive the commission of compensatory relief when a contemnor harms consumers by violating an injunction previously entered under Section 13(b)," the agency wrote. "It is thus at odds with the very purpose of contempt, which empowers a court 'to enforce its judgments and orders necessary to the due administration of law and the protection of the rights of suitors.'"

Neither the FTC nor Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals immediately responded to Law360's requests for comment.

Hi-Tech and Wheat are represented by Robert F. Parsley and Meredith C. Lee of Miller & Martin PLLC.

The FTC is represented by Elizabeth B. Prelogar of the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as in-house by Anisha S. Dasgupta, Mariel Goetz, and Bradley Grossman.

The case is Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals Inc. et al., Petitioners v. Federal Trade Commission et al., case number 23-704, in the U.S. Supreme Court.