Red Bull Class Action Settlement Objector Appeals Decision

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A class member who disagrees with the class action settlement reached with Red Bull GmbH is appealing the deal through the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

A New York federal judge granted final approval to the Red Bull class action settlement in early May, but class member Dave Mager says that he he has “several objections to the settlement.”

Under the terms of the Red Bull class action settlement, all 2 million class members are supposed to receive a cash payment or free cans of Red Bull totaling about $13 million, including $3.4 million in attorneys’ fees.

Mager said that he disagrees with Class Members all receiving the same payout, not taking into account how many cans of Red Bull each person had purchased. He also wants Class Members to have more time to cash their checks and says that any left over funds should be divided among Class Members, not be donated to charity.

“Most important, I object to paying class counsel almost 30 percent of the kitty!” Mager said in his April objection. “I bet their share will be even higher of the claims actually paid.”

The class action settlement was reached in August 2014, in which Class Members were originally supposed to receive either a $10 check or $15 in Red Bull products. However, because so many Class Members came forward, the payout was significantly less, with each Class Member who opted for a cash payout receiving about $4.23, for those who opted for the payout.

However, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failia granted final approval to the Red Bull class action settlement, but she did cut $1.4 million from the $4.75 million in attorneys’ fees the parties had originally agreed upon, dropping the attorneys’ fees to $3.4 million.

Forty percent of the Class Members opted for the energy drink and 60 percent chose the cash. There were 30 Class Members who opted out of the Red Bull class action settlement, and 11 Class Members who objected to the settlement, which Judge Failia rejected, despite her own reservations.

Mager is one of the 11 Class Members who objected to the Red Bull class action settlement. He is representing himself on the matter.

Another objector, Jonathan Corbett said that he disagreed with the claims in the Red Bull class action settlement altogether, calling it naive.

“At no point did I actually expect that my consumption of Red Bull would result in the spontaneous growth of wings, nor the addition of wings to my body via any other method (surgical, divine intervention, etc.),” Corbett wrote in his objection.

Red Bull was hit with the false advertising class action lawsuit by plaintiff Benjamin Careathers in 2013. A similar class action lawsuit was filed against Red Bull in a California federal court by plaintiffs David Wolf and Miguel Almaraz.

The plaintiffs alleged that “Red Bull falsely marketed its energy drinks as providing certain functional benefits and thereby induced consumers into purchasing and/or paying a ‘premium’ for those drinks over alternate sources of caffeine.”

They claim that that “Red Bull labeling and marketing has deceived customers.”

“The thrust of the allegations herein is that the functional benefits of consuming Red Bull are not superior to the benefits from ingesting an equivalent amount of alternate sources of caffeine, and that consumers have been misled by Red Bull advertising to believe the drink is a superior source of energy beyond caffeine,” the plaintiffs wrote in their motion to have the Red Bull class action settlement approved.

The plaintiffs are represented by Benedict Morelli, David Ratner, Adam Deutsch, Jeremy Alters and Matthew Moore of Morelli Alters Ratner LLP and Frederic Fox, Justin Farar, Laurence King and Linda Fong of Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP.

The defendants are represented by Kenneth Plevan, Jordan Feirman, Jason Russell and Hillary Hamilton of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.

The Red Bull False Advertising Class Action Lawsuits are Benjamin Careathers v. Red Bull North America Inc., Case No. 1:13-cv-00369, and David Wolf et al. v. Red Bull GmbH, Case No. 1:13-cv-08008, both in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

UPDATE: On Jan. 26, 2016, Top Class Actions readers started reporting that they received four-packs of Red Bull or checks worth $4.25 in the mail.