Panera Bread’s highly caffeinated Charged Lemonade is now blamed for a second death, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
Dennis Brown, of Fleming Island, Florida, drank three Charged Lemonades from a local Panera on Oct. 9 and then suffered a fatal cardiac arrest on his way home, the suit says.
Brown, 46, had an unspecified chromosomal deficiency disorder, a developmental delay and a mild intellectual disability. He lived independently, frequently stopping at Panera after his shifts at a supermarket, the legal complaint says. Because he had high blood pressure, he did not consume energy drinks, it adds.
A can of monster has around 300mg per can. People walk around drinking those like waters everyday. The first death made national news. Then they put a warning label onto the product. AND they put a warning label on the drink dispensers. At that point if u manage to hurt yourself with the product despite all those warnings that’s your fault. Its like saying we should beable to sue somebody who’s selling coffee if they have a customer that drinks 10 cups in a morning and has a heart attack.
McDonalds was sued for their hot coffee burning a customer. They put lids with caution hot warnings on them and put it on the cups. After that all burns incurred are not their problem. Same case should apply here and likely will in court.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the issue is that the specific amount of caffeine was not originally disclosed - people with heart conditions would naturally exclude themselves from drinking energy drinks (which, although abused, should also NOT be drunk like water), but nobody would expect a panera bread lemonade to have that much caffeine.
The Mcdonalds lawsuit is an interesting parallel, because there is a lot of myth and legend around the specifics of the case. Mcdonalds are pretty unanimously regarded to have been in the wrong on this one AFAIK. Check out Legal Eagle’s video on the topic here: https://youtu.be/s_jaU5V9FUg