A young woman with a heart condition drank a Charged Lemonade, being unaware of its caffeine content, and later died. The family contends that it should have been displayed with the high-caffeine drinks and if she had known, she wouldn’t have consumed it. Sounds pretty bare-bones to me.
I don’t know what the in-store displays/menu said but from Panera’s website:
Plant-based and Clean with as much caffeine as our Dark Roast coffee.
From the story: "“Instead, Defendants market, advertise, and sell Panera Charged Lemonade as a product that is ‘Plant-based and Clean with as much caffeine as our Dark Roast Coffee,’” the lawsuit reads. However, in their stores, Panera does “not specify what size of Panera Dark Roast coffee is akin to a Panera Charged Lemonade,” making the comparison vague and “unhelpful.”
189mg/16 oz coffee
Charged lemonade
260mg/20 oz
390mg/30 oz
If it’s clearly compared to coffee re caffeine in the shop, then that seems like appropriate warning.
Agree. What is Panera supposed to do, post a warning for every possible risk of consuming a caffinated drink? It indicates the drink is caffinated, so where is customer accountability here? I am not meaning to be insensitive to what happened here.
If the warning about caffeine content was appropriately displayed then Panera should be ok. “Should” in some idealistic sense, lawsuits are something else entirely.
I don’t mean to be insensitive either - but at some point, people have to take responsibility for themselves. I just saw someone elsewhere complaining that she is a diabetic and was told the diet soda didn’t have sugar but hers had sugar and it could have killed her. Most likely what actually happened is that someone simply made a mistake and served her regular soda - there’s no way to prevent that. She got mad when people told her that in that case, she shouldn’t drink fountain soda. And the same goes for this- if you aren’t supposed to have caffeine and it might kill you , then maybe you shouldn’t drink anything that has caffeine or that might be confused with something with caffeine. I’m sorry having a particular disease limits you in this way, that you can’t order lemonade at Panera or drink coffee anywhere but home or have to pay extra for bottled soda rather than fountain, but sometimes there’s just no way around it.
That’s the critical bit; was there a sign up at this particular restaurant? Or did she think that this was regular lemonade? Because one article says, “She was diagnosed with the condition when she was 5 years old, took daily medication and avoided energy drinks and other highly caffeinated beverages, the complaint said.”
I get enough caffeine from Mountain Dew and coffee. Caffeine jitters aren’t fun.
I don’t understand the need for super high caffeine drinks. They’ve never appealed to me. I don’t even like Espresso coffee.
This case is different because the customer didn’t understand what was in the drink.
“Charged Lemonade”.
Right there should be a red flag to someone who shouldn’t have caffeine. At least to the extent of asking questions. Also, it was mentioned that she could have some caffeine.
From the OP’s link article.
However, Katz was “reasonably confident it was a traditional lemonade and/or electrolyte sports drink containing a reasonable amount of caffeine safe for her to drink,” the lawsuit says, adding that Panera misled consumers by not properly labeling “Charged Lemonade” as an energy drink in stores.
Bolding mine.
You have to drink something. I’ve seen bottles of caffeinated water.
I was annoyed the first time i had Barq root beer, because i was accustomed to thinking of “root beer” as one of the “safe” sodas. (Spoiler alert, i didn’t die, i just had an unpleasant reaction to the caffeine.) I’m sure she thought of lemonade as a “safe” beverage.
I’ve recently seen caffeinated foods, too.
If the labeling was clear and prominent, i don’t think Panera should be found liable for her death. But i don’t really think she was, either. I think this falls into the category of “sucks to be different”. Left handed people have a lower life expectation than right handers. Because the world is designed around right handers, and it sucks to be different.
One thing about coffee is that the roast level has little indication of the caffeine content. Roasting longer doesn’t create or release more caffeine in the beans. The amount of caffeine is fixed and in fact, lighter roasts have a fraction of a percent more caffeine than darker roasts due to caffeine breaking down from heat exposure.
I think there’s a difference between getting a bottled water and being surprised it has caffeine and not thinking there might be a difference between the “charged lemonade” and the other lemonade that is on the menu or not realizing that someone might accidentally serve you regular soda/coffee when you asked for diet/decaf. It’s not like the charged lemonade is the only lemonade on the menu or that it’s simply referred to as “lemonade”. To be perfectly honest, I suspect she knew the lemonade had caffeine based on the following from the lawsuit
“reasonably confident it was a traditional lemonade and/or electrolyte sports drink containing a reasonable amount of caffeine safe for her to drink,”
“its caffeine content is not controlled and, in turn, has an innate and dangerous potential to vary,”
I’m not trying to say it’s her fault - “it sucks to be different” is closer to what I mean. But anything made on the premises might vary - that doesn’t automatically make it dangerous.
Oh, and I just noticed - the family wasn’t with her, they don’t know how many free refills she may have had and don’t even actually know what she believed about the lemonade.
It was prominent enough that she clearly realized it had caffeine in it, according to the OP’s linked article. If you have a medical issue that makes drinking too much caffeine dangerous, and you know a beverage has caffeine in it, your first question should be, “How much?” instead of assuming the amount is safe for someone with your condition.
Actually, if I had a heart condition that could be fatal if I had too much of a particular substance, I’d avoid that substance completely on the supposition that a less-than-fatal amount still wouldn’t be good for me.
Do we know that this wasn’t the only lemonade on the menu or that it wasn’t referred to simply as “lemonade”? It’s possible that the signage at this store was defective or non-standard.
It’s definitely not the only lemonade on the menu - I can’t swear what the signage in the store says but if the family says
Instead, Defendants market, advertise, and sell Panera Charged Lemonade as a product that is ‘Plant-based and Clean with as much caffeine as our Dark Roast Coffee,’”
they aren’t alleging that the menu made it appear to be ordinary, non-caffeinated lemonade ( which at my local Panera , is about a dollar cheaper.) They are apparently alleging that the drink it was mislabeled because it didn’t use the words “energy drink”.
I found this picture. I have no idea how visible it is to customers.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Panera-Charged-Lemonade-Lawsuit-102623-61d03b664cbc45d1b040d9e373ed4367.jpg)
That looks like the self-serve dispensers and according to this article it seems that the store in question had the charged lemonades in the self-service area.
At the Panera location in Philadelphia where Ms. Katz bought the Charged Lemonade on Sept. 10, 2022, the legal complaint said, the drink was offered next to beverages that did not have caffeine, or had less caffeine. It was not advertised as an energy drink.
Ms. Crawford said that she did not know how much Ms. Katz drank because she subscribed to a Panera program that offered free refills at a self-serve station.
If those signs were on the dispensers, I’d say she was entirely at fault.