alcohol beverages generally

I am very pleased to announce that we will be joining with Chicago law firm Locke Lord to provide the following webinar. Simon and Tom have lots of experience representing consumer products companies in defending class action lawsuits. They have been closely involved with the wave of litigation that has descended upon the alcohol beverage industry in the past couple of years. Robert has worked with Simon and Tom on some of these cases in the past, and has more than 25 years of experience focused on how federal and state governments, and private plaintiffs, work together to affect alcohol beverage labels, formulas and marketing.

 

Locke Lord and Lehrman Beverage Law invite you to

Spirits Industry Under Fire Webinar: Thursday, June 4, 2015 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm ET

 

Locke Lord and Lehrman Beverage Law invite brewers, distillers, and producers, distributors and retailers of beer, wine and spirits to a free webinar.

Register Now Locke Lord Speakers Thomas J. Cunningham Partner Chicago T: 312-443-1731 Email

  Simon A. Fleischmann Partner Chicago T: 312-443-0462 Email     Lehrman Beverage Law Speaker

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Yet another lawsuit about beverage labeling. This time it’s Blue Moon beer. The class action lawsuit (Parent v. MillerCoors LLC) was filed April 24, 2015 in state court, in San Diego. It alleges that MillerCoors is tricking consumers about whether Blue Moon is craft beer.

There are now literally dozens of class action lawsuits, filed all around the country in just the past couple of years, in state and federal courts, against many of the most popular beer and spirits products in the country. Wine is notably absent, so far.

The complaint alleges that MillerCoors:

1. makes more than 2.4 billion gallons of beer a year — about 12 times what the prevailing Brewers Association definition, for a craft brewer, allows
2. falsely portrays the product as “artfully crafted,” when in fact it’s a macrobrew
3. hides the MillerCoors affiliation under various fake entities
4. misleads consumers into paying up to 50% more, via omissions and misrepresentations

For good measure, the suit alleges:

Defendant’s business practices are immoral, unethical, oppressive, and unscrupulous, and cause substantial injury to consumers, including Plaintiff and the other members of the Class. As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s unlawful business practices, Class members suffered injury in that they paid a premium price for a product that would...

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From the demise of Prohibition until about a year ago, you could fairly safely assume your label was right, if it was approved by TTB. Most people assumed they had a “safe harbor,” created upon approval, even if some of the claims were dubious.

This has been changing, and fast. The causes are numerous. One big one is the Pom case, decided in mid-2014. Another is an onslaught of class action lawsuits (such as Tito’s, Makers Mark, Beam, Angel’s Envy, Templeton). I am not discussing these factors in detail in this post because we have covered them a lot in many other blog posts, readily findable. A third factor is the rise of whiskey. The whiskey rules are quite a bit more complicated than those for other leading categories such as vodka.

The details about this trend are set out in the April-May 2015 issue of Beverage Master – Craft Spirits & Brew Magazine. The article is entitled, Why Your Whiskey Label is Probably Wrong.

Some people don’t like hearing this message and think it sounds a tad alarmist. But for every one of those people, there are experts who understand this confluence of circumstances can take your company down (and perhaps some who are eager to do...

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