Class Actions That Changed the Way You Drink

Today is St. Patrick’s Day – a time to celebrate Irish culture with good friends, good food, and good drinks. Whether you’ll be sipping Guinness or trying something from closer to home, there’s one thing all drinks have in common: they’re a product of our modern legal system just as much as the brewers of old. Alcohol, like all food and drink sold in the United States, is regulated by a range of laws and government agencies aiming to ensure safety, consistency, and honesty. From the way your drinks are advertised to the ingredients used to make them, laws affect the way you drink – and when laws are broken, lawsuits help to protect consumers and bring about change. In honor of St Paddy’s, we’ve looked around for lawsuits from recent years that have done exactly what they were supposed to: changed the way you drink.

Did TGI Fridays Swap Quality Liquor for Cheap Knock Offs?

It’s fair to expect that when you order a drink, you get what you pay for – which is why a lawsuit was filed in New Jersey last year after it came out that several bars and restaurants may have been switching out their liquor. The lawsuit – which specifically accused several TGI Fridays in New Jersey and more than 70 bars nationwide of serving cut-rate vodka, whisky and other hard liquors and passing it off as brand-name alcohol – was filed after Operation Swill, a year-long investigation by authorities. Although Fridays declined to comment at the time, the lawsuits are an important sign that local government is willing to act to make sure customers get what they pay for.

Beck’s and Kirin in Trouble for Country of Origin Labels

When is Japanese beer not Japanese? When it’s made in the USA, according to a lawsuit filed against Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc., the maker of Kirin Ichiban beer. According to plaintiffs in the suit, which is now settled, the company willfully misled consumers by placing Japanese text and symbols on the beer’s label despite small print that stated the beer was actually made in Virginia. The settlement deadline for this suit is June 16, so if you bought the beer and haven’t filed a claim yet, you still have time to do so. Qualifying individuals can claim up to $150.

Plaintiffs from Florida, New York and California have also filed a class action against the brewer for its labeling of Beck’s. Again, according to the suit, the labeling allegedly tricks beer drinkers into thinking that Beck’s was brewed in Germany – when it’s actually made in the United States. Anheuser-Busch’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit was denied last September, with the judge writing that “the 'Product of USA' disclaimer as printed on the actual cans and bottles themselves is difficult to read […] A reasonable consumer is not required to open a carton or remove a product from its outer packaging in order to ascertain whether representations made on the face of the packaging are misleading.”

Anheuser-Busch Accused of Watering Down Beers

In February 2013, the LA Times reported that Anheuser-Busch had been hit with lawsuits in California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey accusing the brewer of listing a higher alcohol content on its beers than what was actually inside. Products named in the lawsuits included a range of drinks:

• Budweiser
• Michelob
• Michelob Ultra
• Bud Ice
• Bud Light Platinum
• Hurricane High Gravity Lager
• King Cobra
• Busch Ice
• Natural Ice
• Bud Light Lime

Former employees of the company – from thirteen breweries – cooperated with plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who alleged that water was routinely added to the drinks immediately before bottling simply as a “cost-saving measure,” changing the alcohol content by 3% to 8%. Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed by a judge after the company argued that the alcohol content of its beers matched the percentages printed on the label within the 0.3% variance allowed by law. In the written notice dismissing the case, the judge wrote that:

“The problem is that the regulation itself does not distinguish between intentional and unintentional variances from the stated percentage. Neither does it identify any circumstances or exceptions that would preclude application of the 0.3 percent tolerance for any malt beverages containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume [...] A court cannot add language to a regulation that is unambiguous on its face, nor can it import or manufacture exceptions that were not included by the enacting agency.

If a regulation or piece of legislation is not desirable, does not match the will of the citizens, or was, for any other reason, improvidently enacted or articulated, the legislative body has the power to revoke it or to modify it to conform more specifically to their intents and purposes.”

In short? No law has been broken – and if you have a problem with the law itself, you need to go about changing it.

Jim Beam Bourbon “Handcrafted” Claim Under Fire

A lot of food and drink lawsuits are filed over the products’ labels – and it’s not always to do with ingredients or where the drink was made. Jim Beam was hit with a lawsuit just last month over the company’s use of “handcrafted” on its bourbon, with plaintiffs claiming that, thanks to a mostly automated production process, the whisky should not be described using a word that conjures up images of personal interaction. Do they have a case? Perhaps – and the crucial detail is that customers, including plaintiff Scott Welk, may be willing to pay a premium for Jim Beam’s white label bourbon specifically because it’s marketed as a handcrafted liquor. The law firm behind the case has issued a statement saying they want to make label representations more accurate, which is certainly something we can all get behind. Maker’s Mark whisky faced similar accusations in January 2015, though the company argued that its process was fully disclosed on its website. Jim Beam’s website also features photos and videos of mechanized production – and it’s these images that may have prompted the lawsuit to begin with. Anything that encourages (and enforces) more accurate and truthful labeling is good for consumers, and that includes claims about “handmade” and “handcrafted” drinks.

List Your Ingredients, Consumers Tell Brewers

You might not know this, but America’s two biggest brewing companies – Anheuser-Busch and Miller Coors – regularly keep the complete list of ingredients in their top beers a secret. Whether it’s because they’re worried about competitors stealing their recipes or because they don’t want to put some drinkers off, more and more beer lovers are pushing the companies to disclose the complete lists. The lack of complete regulation is down to a quirk of government; beer in the United States is actually regulated by the Treasury Department, rather than exclusively by the FDA. The Treasury Department has no rules about posting complete ingredient lists on beer labels or brewers’ websites, and so brewers have the freedom to disclose only what is absolutely necessary. A number of prominent food bloggers have started petitioning beer makers to open up about their ingredients, and while no lawsuits have been filed over this – no laws, after all, have been broken – it’s hard to see how companies will be able to hold out much longer. The number of lawsuits filed over undisclosed ingredients and mislabeled foods is on the rise, and the sooner beer labels accurately reflect their entire contents, the better – for breweries and beer lovers alike.