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.
I recently went to try the charged lemonade (was really gross btw), they do a pretty good job of advertising what’s in it. You’d honestly have to go out of your way to avoid the signage telling you about the caffeine.
That and if a drink is charged it usually implies caffeine, alcohol, or vitamin stuff. Either way it is something a person should probably be curious enough to investigate before consuming. Idk why someone would just order and drink something that they don’t know anything about… That just seems weird and irresponsible
I’m usually all for knocking corps down a peg, but this charged lemonade stuff with panera feels more like a failure of personal responsibility of the individual.
Something tells me the fact that he was developmentally delayed and had a mental disorder with what sounds like diabetes, makes me unsurprised fam.
And these two comments are why cases try to settle vs going to trial.
It’s worth noting they’ve since changed how they do things after the first lawsuit from what I read. It wasn’t always the way you saw. It wasn’t labeled as having caffeine and was next to other non-caffinated drinks.
Not only that but before the 1st lawsuit their large size had nearly 390g caffeine, which is right at the limit of what’s safe for a healthy adult. I don’t think a reasonable person would have expected quite that much caffeine. Though they have reduced it since that 1st lawsuit