A few months ago we blogged about a lawsuit where the plaintiffs alleged they were deceived by the “Hawaiian-ness” that Kona Brewing Company conveyed on their beer labels. The case was emblematic of a series of suits alleging that because beers were seemingly marketed as “foreign,” but produced in a domestic location, the brewers tricked the public into making purchases. In addition to Kona, the makers of Red Stripe, Sapporo, Kirin Ichiban, and Beck’s have all been dragged into court.
Luckily, those brewers who fought back have been winning. As mentioned in that previous commentary, the makers of both Red Stripe and Sapporo successfully petitioned their respective courts to dismiss their plaintiffs’ cases. We can now add Fosters to the list. Because Fosters’ product labels specifically state that brewing occurred in Georgia and Texas, no consumer would reasonably believe that it was imported from Australia.
With defeats piling up, let’s hope that the plaintiffs’ attorneys behind these frivolous claims will put an end to their “drunk suing.”