Feeling betrayed by Lance Armstrong, now that he has admitted his heroic return to the Tour de France championship after nearly dying of testicular cancer was drug-assisted? Who isn't? Armstrong's admissions last week were riveting precisely because the personal story he recounted in his best-selling memoirs -- "It's Not About the Bike" and "Every Second Counts" -- was so inspiring. It was the books, as well as the bike, that made Armstrong a hero.

Do the books also make him a fraud? Two California men, Rob Stutzman and Jonathan Wheeler, filed a statewide class action Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento, claiming that Armstrong and his publishers violated state consumer, false advertising and fraud laws when they sold supposedly non-fiction books that were filled with lies. Stutzman, a public relations executive who served as a deputy chief of staff for former California governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, and Wheeler, a chef and amateur cyclist, claim they bought the books because they believed in Armstrong. "When Armstrong confessed doping to (Oprah) Winfrey," the complaint said, "Stutzman felt duped, cheated and betrayed" and Wheeler was "disappointed ... cheated and betrayed." Lawyers for the purported class of Armstrong book buyers, Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer and the Law Office of Tracey Buck-Walsh, argue that readers in California are entitled to restitution and possibly statutory and punitive damages for deceptions that they say Armstrong's publishers should have detected (even though drug testers at international cycling competitions, including the Olympics, didn't).

You may recall that we've been down this road before, after the supposed humanitarian Greg Mortenson admitted that parts of his best-selling memoirs "Three Cups of Tea" and "Stones into Schools" had been fabricated or embellished. His readers also cried fraud, and, following the example of readers who wrung a $2.75 million settlement from literary hoaxer James Frey, sued Mortenson and his publishers for racketeering, fraud and breach of contract.

But as I wrote last May, when U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon of Missoula, Montana, tossed the Mortenson readers' case, the Frey settlement was an anomalous victory for aggrieved book buyers. Haddon's opinion described the long history of unsuccessful litigation over inaccuracies or untruths in supposedly non-fiction books, concluding that publishers have no implied duty to book buyers to assure the accuracy of their products. In one famous case that parallels those against Mortenson and Armstrong, readers brought claims against the publishers of "The Beardstown Ladies' Common Sense Investment Guide," after it turned out that the Beardstown Ladies weren't actually as good at investing as the book made them out to be. State appeals courts in New York and California ruled that the publishers nevertheless weren't liable to readers who followed the ladies' investment advice.

There is one potentially significant difference between the Mortenson case and the new Armstrong class action: The complaint against Armstrong and his publishers, Penguin and Random House, asserts claims under California's notoriously plaintiffs-friendly consumer protections laws. The Mortenson case, by contrast, featured Montana and federal-law causes of action. I called lawyers in the Armstrong case to ask how the California laws would permit them to succeed when so many previously duped readers have failed, but they didn't call back. Name plaintiff Stutzman also didn't respond to a message I left at his public relations firm.

Penguin will be represented in the Armstrong suit by Dorsey & Whitney, which won the Mortenson case for the publisher. You can be sure Dorsey lawyers will raise the same First Amendment and implied duty defenses in the new case as in the previous one. Dorsey partner Jonathan Herman declined to comment on how the publisher will respond to the Armstrong complaint's California-law claims but said, "As far as we're concerned, this is also a case that should be dismissed."

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