Anheuser-Busch Escapes Watered-Down Beer Class Action Lawsuit

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An Ohio federal judge has dismissed a consolidated class action lawsuit accusing Anheuser-Busch Cos. LLC of adding extra water to its beer products so that they’re “well below” their advertised 5% volume, ruling that Anheuser-Busch is within the federally acceptable range of 0.3 percent wiggle room allowed for malt beverages containing 0.5 alcohol or more.

In June 2013, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) approved the consolidation of six putative class action lawsuits accusing Anheuser-Busch Cos. LLC of selling watered down beer by overstating the alcohol content of its beers.

Plaintiffs claim that Anheuser-Busch possesses technology that allows it to precisely identify and control the alcohol content of its malt beverages to within “hundredths of one percent (0.01%).” Nonetheless, the class action lawsuit says, “Anheuser-Busch routinely and intentionally adds extra water to its finished product to produce malt beverages that ‘consistently have significantly lower alcohol content than the percentages displayed on its labels.'”

The Anheuser-Busch beers in question include:

• Black Crown
• Budweiser
• Bud Ice
• Bud Light Lime
• Bud Light Platinum
• Busch Ice
• Hurricane High Gravity Lager
• King Cobra
• Michelob
• Michelob Ultra
• Natural Ice

The plaintiffs claim that they would not have bought the Anheuser-Busch beer products if they had known the stated alcohol content on the label was false.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (ATTB) is the agency that ensures that manufacturers provide the consumer with adequate information as to the identity and quality of products and their alcoholic content. The agency has enacted several regulations specifically addressing the labeling of malt beverage products. Part of the regulation states that: “for malt beverages containing 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume, a tolerance of 0.3 percent will be permitted, either above or below the stated percentage alcohol.”

In granting the motion to dismiss, U.S. District Judge Donald C. Nugent said, “As understandable as it may be for Plaintiffs to feel slighted by a misrepresentation they believe was knowing and intentional, the law has always required Plaintiffs to show more than just the a violation of a principle in order to maintain a cause of action. In this case, the [ATTB] has determined that a misstatement of alcohol content within a 0.3 percent range is not significant enough to be actionable. Therefore, it created a legally permissible range of tolerance for misstatements of alcohol content.”

Judge Nugent urged the plaintiffs to pursue proper legislative means to change the 0.3 tolerance if they desired.

“For whatever reason, be it lack of perceived harm, expediency of enforcement, a desire to create a level playing field within the industry, or a mere lack of foresight, the [ATTB] chose to apply that tolerance universally without regard to whether the misstatements were intentional or accidental,” he said.

“If the perceived injustice at issue in this case is as important to Plaintiffs as
they have suggested through the course of this litigation, they can make their concerns known to the [ATTB] and lobby for changes in the regulation.”

The Anheuser-Busch Beer Class Action Lawsuit is In Re: Anheuser-Busch Beer Labeling Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation, MDL Number 2448, in the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

UPDATE: On Mar. 22, 2016, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a consolidated class action lawsuit that accused Anheuser-Busch of overstating the alcohol content of its beers.

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