A former employee of an Irving-based hormone therapy and supplements company has filed a lawsuit, alleging that one of the company’s sleep supplements caused serious liver damage to him and his wife.
Christopher and Mary Pat Sharon filed a lawsuit against Biote Medical on Monday evening, in Dallas County court. The couple raised concerns that other people may have been harmed by the supplement, too.
The online court record on Tuesday afternoon did not yet show any formal response from Biote. Representatives of Biote also did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The Sharons say in their lawsuit filing that they took Biote’s “Deep Sleep” supplement as directed. Around 2021, after taking the supplement, they allege that they both began to have symptoms of liver damage, requiring doctor’s visits for both of them and a liver biopsy for Mary Pat Sharon.
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In late 2021, the filing says, Biote discontinued the sleep supplement and released a reformulated version, called “Best Night Sleep.” The filing says the company did not issue any type of notice to the public about the previous version of the supplement. Christopher Sharon, who is not a physician, also did not immediately connect the supplement to his and his wife’s health issues.
This file photo shows Biote’s Irving office.
Over the course of the next couple years, Christopher Sharon became concerned that the original version of the supplement may have been dangerous, the filing says, based on his own experience and reports from other consumers.
By 2023, Christopher Sharon — who worked at Biote at the time but has since been terminated — raised his concerns internally, according to the lawsuit.
The company allegedly did not address or substantively respond to his concerns.
“Mr. Sharon became increasingly convinced,” the suit says, “that the reformulation of Deep Sleep was related to the safety concerns associated with the original product.”
Christopher Sharon was terminated from Biote in mid-2025. One of his attorneys, Bill Brewer, said the company pointed to a restructuring as the reason for the termination.
Brewer said Christopher Sharon is suing now — as opposed to before his termination — after trying and failing to hold the company accountable internally.
“Mr. Sharon never felt he got an adequate explanation as to … what the company was doing (and) whether the company discontinued the Deep Sleep product as a result of others reporting the same problems that he and his wife experienced,” Brewer said.
The Brewer law firm has sued Biote before.
The firm represented Biote’s founder, Gary Donovitz, in a 2022 lawsuit against the company. In the suit, Donovitz alleged he was deceived into agreeing to a merger deal to take the company public — a deal that, he said, turned out to be a “get-rich-quick scheme” that diluted his ownership and cost him millions.
In 2024, Biote settled with Donovitz and with Donovitz’s ex-wife, also represented by the Brewer firm. The two settlement agreements totaled more than $130 million.
