Consumer vs Blue Moon class action lawsuit

Buy another. That should pretty much cover any and all monies you'd see from a settlement

 

Give the accepted notion that the American consumer is a blithering idiot. This might become interesting and possibly even popcorn worthy.

 

And if you ask "who owns blue moon beer" the first hit you get tells you all the details of the chain of ownership. So its even easier than checking the MC website. But then one has to care about product ownership to even make that much effort.

 

Compared to the class, absolutely. Plaintiffs get dollars, lawyers get thousands.

 

It seems Golden also has a few small breweries...

https://www.google.com/maps/search/...n,+CO!3s0x876b981287686cf7:0x14c64654208055dc

 

Interview with the guy who started Blue Moon. He believes they've always been "craft" FWIW
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-blue-moon-made-craft-beer-meaningless-2015-05-01

 

I have read the complaint. There's not a shard of evidence in the complaint. There are some correct observations such as MillerCoors has distanced itself from Blue Moon, at least from an advertising or promotional standpoint. But to reiterate, I cannot find anything in the complaint that can remotely hold up in court. There are many misstatements as well such as complaining that the beer is not labeled in accordance with the Food and Drug Act.
Granted that Blue Moon does not meet the BA definition of "craft Beer," but that not a legal or enforceable definition.
Disclaimer: I have consulted with both small and large brewers (including Coors). But this does not influence in any way my opinion of the complaint.

 

Can we say that Blue Moon is NOT "proudly macro"?

 

don't agree with it?, don't buy it !!

 

Easier yet, scroll down to the bottom of the BM home page. Right down there in teeny little letters it reads Golden, Co

 

For me, Blue Moon was one of the original gateways into real craft beer. It had an experimental flavor back when it was released and represented a style (wit) that was anything but mainstream. I wholeheartedly disagree that just because a parent company is known for one type of product doesn't mean it can't produce another as well.
As for the premium bit, give me a break. If consumers didn't like it, they wouldn't make 2.4b gallons or whatever the volume is each year. Supply and demand people.

 

Does this mean Miller High Life isn't champagne?

 

This is called mere puffery. The world's best legal dictionary told me so.

 

Um, you realize a complaint is not an evidentiary document?

 

This is the dumbest thing ever. What a complete waste of time, energy, and resources.

It seems to me that people who know what's up don't really care. If you don't like the beer, then don't drink it. We should recognize Blue Moon as a pathway for people to drink better beer.

Again, just my opinion but who gives a shit.

 

Flipping through various sports on TV this past weekend, I saw commercials talking about "champagne of beers".. A "SUPERIOR" beer, and even what BUD has attempted this with "brewed the hard way". It's all slick marketing.

Now where this Blue Moon case lies in relation? Almost every consumer if they are deemed this stupid and naive, can feel duped into buying almost EVERYTHING that they buy.

 

Waste of time and money. Society has become too litigious.

 

This lawsuit pisses me off far more than any attempt at deception that MillerCoors has perpetuated with their branding of Blue Moon. For anyone who didn't click through, the complaint alleges that MillerCoors:

I think the part that annoys me the most about the lawsuit is the whole implication that "artfully crafted" and "macrobrew" are mutually exclusive terms.

Without even getting into the fact that "macrobrew" is a generic term with no numerically-defined differentiation from "microbrew", how does one go about proving or disproving artisanship? What defines "artful"? On the "craft" part, one could easily make the argument that MillerCoors literally crafted Blue Moon to appeal to consumers who wanted more out of beer than the mostly flavorless yellow fizzy beer that dominated the market at one point in time. If you agree that brewing is partly an art, then who is to say which brewers are artful and which are not in their creation of beer? Do you have to like it for it to qualify as art? Because that's the uncomfortable implication of this suit.

Plus, I can't help but smirk at the notion that these consumers who supposedly care so much who makes their beer and how it is made--to the point of suing for damages--apparently can't be bothered to put in the minimum effort needed to find the answers to those questions out for themselves:

https://www.google.com/search?q=who+makes+blue+moon&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Others have noted the whole contract brewer question. I would point out an example in my own backyard: Boulevard. Should we require that they put "owned by Duvel Moortgat" on all their labels? Personally, I think not, because in some cases, being required to include such information plays on the ignorance and bias of consumers. They see that and believe (falsely) that their beer is somehow different or, worse, lesser than it was before Duvel purchased the brewery, when in reality, it's the same beer it always was. If anything, the Duvel sale has allowed Boulevard to expand their reach and get more creative with the beers they create. Selling to Duvel was arguably to the consumer's benefit. And yet, you should have seen some of the emotional, ignorant responses from locals when the sale was first announced. All they cared about was the perception that Boulevard was no longer a local company (it still is) and that they had supposedly sold out (they didn't).

So while the idea of informing the consumer is absolutely a noble one, there is another side to giving consumers information. There is a point at which information has the opposite of the intended effect. Like so many things, there is an appropriate middle ground. In this case, that middle ground is somewhere between intentionally lying to consumers about what they are purchasing and requiring companies to put every single minute detail about a product on labeling. Personally, I feel that while Blue Moon intentionally omits who owns the company, their central claim about the beer (being "artfully crafted") is plenty true. In this case, requiring the extra labeling would only serve to inflame the existing bias against BMC--the very bias that was likely the real source of this lawsuit.

If consumers care whether or not BMC is making their beer, it is an easy enough thing to find out. And requiring Blue Moon to label themselves as a subsidiary of MillerCoors would potentially damage their ability to sell to consumers who don't care enough about brewery ownership to type in a simple Google search.

While true, there is nothing false on the Blue Moon label. Failure to offer up the ownership on their label is not a false claim about the product inside.

 

I can see both sides of this but I still think suing is ridiculous. If I start a website selling air guitar strings and you buy them. Whose fault is it when I send you an empty box? But, at the same time it does get on my nerves when big beer attacks craft beer while buying up craft breweries. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

 

Interview with the plaintiff and his attorney. Recognize the setting?

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loc...-Moon-Product-Speaks-With-NBC7-302330371.html