Life Alert Will Pay $1.35 Million : Lawsuit: Chatsworth firm also agrees to stop alleged high-pressure sales tactics in pact with county and state attorneys.

Life Alert, the Chatsworth-based emergency response company, agreed to pay $1.35 million and to stop using alleged high-pressure sales tactics as part of an out-of-court settlement last week with county and state attorneys.

The company is best known for its television advertisements depicting an elderly woman who has fallen and moans that she can’t get up to dial for help.

The agreement was reached two weeks into a civil trial stemming from a $2-million lawsuit brought against the company in September, 1991, by district attorneys from nine California counties--including Los Angeles--and state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

“This case demonstrates how local district attorneys, with the help of the attorney general, can muster the resources necessary to successfully attack the type of unlawful and slick sales practices perpetuated by companies like Life Alert,” Lungren said in a statement.

A lawyer for Life Alert, William T. McGivern Jr., said the company settled to avoid “a prolonged and costly trial that would disrupt the company’s ability to conduct business and serve its customers.”

McGivern said the alleged violations involved “a small number” of salespeople outside of Life Alert’s headquarters, and that if proven, the actions would have violated the company’s own policies.

Life Alert’s system includes a portable “help button” in the customer’s home that triggers an electronic device on the telephone. The device dials the offices of Life Alert, whose employees then contact emergency dispatchers.

The lawsuit was not aimed directly at the TV ad, but at Life Alert’s sales tactics and allegedly misleading pitches.

Life Alert led consumers into wrongly believing that they would receive special treatment from 911 emergency dispatchers, the suit alleged.

Life Alert salespeople also unfairly coerced elderly and disabled people into paying up to $5,000 for the system, the suit alleged.

Under the settlement, Life Alert will pay $700,000 to a victim-restitution fund, $350,000 in civil penalties and $300,000 in legal costs.

The company also is barred from making misleading claims regarding customers’ preferential treatment by 911 dispatchers, and from “falsely claiming its system its staffed by ex-police and ex-air traffic controllers who have special access or hot lines to 911 emergency services.”

Some Life Alert customers also had complained to authorities that Life Alert salespeople spent several hours in their homes trying to persuade them to buy the system.

The settlement prohibits those sales presentations from exceeding three hours, and potential buyers must be told in advance how long the presentations will last.