Restaurant chain’s lemonade ‘kills a second customer’
The restaurant chain Panera Bread has been blamed for a second death around its caffeinated Charged Lemonade drink.
Dennis Brown, 46, drank three Charged Lemonades from a Panera location in Fleming Island, Florida, and died from a ‘cardiac event’ while walking home, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday and obtained by NBC News.
The wrongful death lawsuit, filed by Brown’s mother, sister and brother in Delaware Superior Court, is the second suit against Panera over its drink that has 390 milligrams of caffeine in size large.
Brown, who lived alone, frequented Panera after getting off work at a supermarket. He suffered from an undisclosed chromosomal deficiency disorder, had a mild intellectual disability and a developmental delay and did not consume energy drinks due to high blood pressure, the suit states.
It is not clear if Brown was aware of the amount of caffeine and stimulants in the lemonade.
Panera ‘knew or should have known’ that the drink could hurt people sensitive to caffeine, children and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, the suit states.
The suit was filed less than two months after Panera was sued over the death of University of Pennsylvania student Sarah Katz, 21. Katz, who had a heart condition and avoided energy drinks, consumed a Charged Lemonade and died in September 2022.
Panera failed to warn customers of the ingredients in the ‘dangerous energy drink’ including the stimulant guarana extract, alleges to the suit filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in late October and obtained by NBC News.
Both suits claim that a large Charged Lemonade has more caffeine than Panera’s dark roast coffee in any size. Some of Panera’s dispensers for the drink have lettering that reads: ‘Plant-based and Clean with as much caffeine as our Dark Roast coffee.’
After the Katz family’s lawsuit, Panera posted notices across its locations warning customers to drink the lemonade in moderation and that it was not suited for those sensitive to caffeine, kids or pregnant or nursing women.
Panera did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Metro.co.uk on the Brown family’s suit.
The Missouri-based company told NBC News it ‘stands firmly by the safety of our products’ and expressed ‘deep sympathy’ for Brown’s family.
‘Based on our investigation we believe his unfortunate passing was not caused by one of the company’s products,’ stated Panera. ‘We view this lawsuit, which was filed by the same law firm as a previous claim, to be equally without merit.’
The Brown family filed the lawsuit a week after a woman sued the restaurant chain Chopt after allegedly biting into a severed human finger in her salad.
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