LaCroix Class Action Withdrawn By Customers

Together, a LaCroix customer and National Beverage Corp. have filed a stipulation to end claims that the popular sparkling water beverage does not live up to its claims of being all natural. A U.S. District Court judge subsequently dismissed the LaCroix false advertising class action lawsuit with prejudice.

Per the agreement struck between the customer and the company, both parties will cover their own legal costs. National Beverage Corp. maintains that it committed no wrongdoing in the false ad class action lawsuit.

Plaintiff Lenora Rice had filed her LaCroix class action lawsuit in October 2018, and claimed that the beverage contained synthetic chemicals. She said that she had purchased the beverages for multiple years, believing them to be all natural. She had argued that she and many other customers had been injured by National Beverage’s deceptive conduct. 

Allegedly, these chemicals included limonene, linalool propionate, linalool, and ethyl butanoate. According to Rice, limonene is known to cause tumors, while another chemical allegedly in the beverage, linslool, is an insecticide. She goes on to say that linalool propionate is a cancer treatment.

Rice’s LaCroix class action lawsuit argued that the presence of these ingredients was in conflict with the company’s assertions that the sparkling beverage is “innocent” and “naturally essenced.” In her original claims, she said that laboratory testing showed the presence of synthetic ingredients in LaCroix.

However, Rice withdrew her complaints, saying that the laboratory that performed the tests later said that it could not be confirmed if the ingredients in question were indeed synthetic, or if they could have come from natural sources.

In retracting the LaCroix lawsuit, Rice said that she did not mean harm to National Beverage, but that she and her lawyer “acknowledge harm was done.” 

This statement was made after National Beverage Corp. had attempted to fight Rice’s claims by calling her lawyers’ legal strategies a “smear campaign.” The company pointed to the LaCroix class action lawsuit’s claims that ingredients in LaCroix were the same as those present in insecticide and cancer treatments. National Beverage called these terms “incendiary language” and “fictional terrorism.”

Further fighting Rice’s claims, the beverage maker argued that it had LaCroix tested at an independent lab, which showed that the ingredients were natural and therefore in line with the advertisements made about LaCroix.

National Beverage Corp. made a bid for sanctions, which was denied by an Illinois federal judge. 

Now, National Beverage Corp. calls the ending of the LaCroix false ad class action lawsuit a “vindication” of the company and “confirms the assurances we gave to our loyal following of LaCroix consumers, our customers and our shareholders that this lawsuit was baseless.”

Do you drink LaCroix? Tell us about your beverage choices in the comments below.

Rice is represented by Roberto Luis Costales, William Henry Beaumont and Jonathan Mille Kirkland of Beaumont Costales LLC.

The LaCroix False Advertising Class Action Lawsuit is Rice, et al. v. National Beverage Corp., Case No. 1:18-cv-07151, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

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