Goose Island prevails in lawsuit over "bad beer"

Greedy cunts.

 

That said, I'm kind of up in the air with how I feel about people suing breweries for making a less than acceptable product. On one hand I think it is good, as it will scare people into investing more time and energy into QC. On the other, I think it's a slippery slope which could result in frivolous lawsuits.

 

Rejected 8K LOL what greedy morons. These sort of people just sour the industry with their attempts to milk companies for cash.

 

What about if there was a dead mouse in the bottle?

 

Indeed on the greed, and ashamed for the state of Massachusetts - deport 'em to Connecticut! Wonder what they intended to do with those 50 bottles that must have taken some time to run about and collect.

GI offered them $160 a bottle - no idea what the stuff sells for but that seems ample compensation that I'd guess is at least 4X or more what the beer costs?

Good to see the court toss this BS out the window. They didn't swallow broken glass and suffer injury or any other harm - it was bad beer.

I'll take "They Got What They Deserved" for $200, Alex.

 

Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out, written by Josh Noel, the author of this article, reports that there was widespread fraud by consumers (or people who claimed to be consumers) when Goose Island offered refunds for BCBS and its variants. Goose Island already spent millions more than it expected in refunds due to that fraud (including a large amount of double-dipping by consumers who exchanged bottles at the brewery and claimed the refunds). This failed effort smacks of similarly unethical opportunism.

 

Wow. For $8k I could take my wife for a vacation in Belgium and come back with a couple cases of Lambics. To ease the pain of my infected BCBS.

 

Makes me wonder, if Goose Island was independent, would they still have rejected that offer?

 

Sounds to me like they got some bad advice from their attorneys, who themselves must have been hoping for a major payout.

 

Half of these people are the same ones who see no problem in muleing away bottles of these beers and then illegally reselling then on the black market for exorbitant prices. How finely tuned do we really expect their consciences to be?

 

What's that they say about a bird in hand?

 

Good for Goose Island, and I'm glad those jack asses lost out. This was clearly a frivolous lawsuit aimed at money, which is hurting our country and its businesses. Was Goose Island in the wrong? Yes, but then start a class action suit, don't go for the gold yourself. Pricks! They probably turned down the $8K for two reasons - #1, they thought they could get more, and #2, they'd spent a good deal of that on lawyers and time already.

 

I didn’t buy any Bourbon County that year and yet was still very aware of the refunds available from GI. Sure, they weren’t running nationals but it wasn’t a secret.

And I’d imagine anyone spending $600 on a single release would be very plugged into the beer scene/happenings.

I agree, they likely got bad advice from their attorney. I can’t imagine turning down that much money over bad beer.

 

Ya think? It's the American way.

 

G.I. did a very good job making this unfortunate situation right with those who bought bottles.

 

I don't know anything about this case other than what I read above. But that never stopped me from giving an opinion before. So here goes:

It sounds to me like the plan here was to get a large class together and a 6 or 7 figure attorney fee. They never had any intention of settling before a class was formed. AB out played them by sending checks for more than what their damages were. If they would have done a better job of establishing the class, that might have got past this hurdle.

 

As someone who works high up the ladder we build in "frivolous" lawsuit costs. We use algoritims to figure out if it is better to just pay someone than to fight it. Common practice everywhere. Just ask Chipotle and all o fthe fake claims they just went ahead and payed because it just made more sense PR wise. That was one hell of a consumer scam. The amount of actual sick cases to false are estimated to have been about 50 to 1 (yes, I have inside info). What has become the more popular, and dangerous lawsuit scam, is the "social justice" type ploy. Even when a claim has no proof at all it is almost always paid off now to avoid the PC/social media/extortion news avalanche that will follow. Right now businesses are clearly presumed guilty and it's getting worse. Funny how times change. It's like the broad stroke of assumed guilt has completetly flipped around. This country definitely moves on a see saw mentality. Huge, wild swings with very little center.

 

Well done. Always over pay. Just makes sense.

 

The suit itself was not frivolous. They just got out lawyered and done in by their greed.
AB/InBev sold a defective product. Someone who purchased the defective product shouldn't be restricted to AB's arbitrary refund period.

 

I don't think that was the case, but I'm also unclear on what exactly went down. If it had been a class action legal suit though, all buyers would have been able to recoup their cost and maybe a bit more - but nothing astronomical, and anyone who had already been reimbursed would have been out (most likely). This doesn't seem like that's what they were going for.

 

Too true, sadly.

 

AB learned their lesson well from the Beck's case, then.

 

HA, sucks to shoot yourself in the foot huh? I bet 8k sounds alot nicer than $0 right about now

 

Not a big Goose Island fan - beer wise - but always supporting my craft brews, and this makes me smile. Good for them! Imagine all of the paperwork, frustration, time and effort that went into refunding the WORTHY consumers. Those 2 greedy bastards got exactly what they deserved. NOTHING.

 

Kind of disagree, I was semi-active on BA/reddit/etc at that time and missed the BW recall yet got back ~36 bottles of regular, with a "buzzer beater." Funny that I had been saving all open BCB_ _ emptes, like you see in pintrest type sites, lighting on fire, a nail polish rmover soaked string, land dunking in water.

Anyways my hoarder tendencies were vindicated on this day, when my tags from every bottle from "bad dates" that I had bought from "day 1" earned me $15 dollars or whatever.

Even though I broke basically even, I have yet to return on the hunt for BCB_ _ since having my spoils "turn" in my possession. Too many amazing brews to waste your time rolling the dice, IMO.

 

You said this really well.

Beer is supposed to be fun, correct?

 

To quote Nelson Muntz

"HA HA"

Enjoy

 

Now maybe they will sue their lawyers for bad legal advice.

 

My copy of the book, discussing the initial refunds of the first bad batches for which no proof of purchase was required, says:

A lot of money - sure, but not exactly "millions". (According to the same book, Goose Island total sales for 2015 were $57.6 million).

For the next series of refunds, they required the actual neck labels and photos of the rear label's date code.

 

I wouldn't expect any less from a dude who'd spend $600 on BCBS.

 

Those guys probably lost money, at least time and out of pocket costs. Ultimately justice prevailed.

 

What, are you saying "several tenths of millions" doesn't count as "millions?"

Thanks for the correction of my faulty memory. I had the number $2 million somehow in my mind and the book unavailable for a fact check at the time of posting, but that was sloppy and poor work on my part. I apologize for spreading false information.

 

I don't think such a case would ever encourage increased QAQC unless it was completely unrelated to a highly
Publicized national recall. If this came out of the blue, then I can see it becoming a PR nightmare and increasing QAQC. Given the issues though, a lawsuit like this just doesn't strike me as moving the ticker.

Why should people not be destructed to an arbitrary refund period?

Is this dissimilar from buying an item from Walmart, exceeding the 90 day return policy, only to open the item and realize it is broke/defective? They aren't required to do anything after that period, but it's fairly easy to brow-beat them into giving it to you. Does that make it wrong that you did not adhere to the return policy that you knew existed?

Alcohol sales are normally final. Yes, I have had success in returning bad wine, and I think an appropriate return period makes sense. To call it arbitrary (it is) only to say that it should be endless does not make sense to me though.

 

There are no similarities at all. Walmart is a retailer and they have conspicuously posted their return policy. When you purchase something there, you are aware of the policy and agree to it.

 

Fair enough, I guess I am just not sure how this is different from buying an item, the item being ruined, and you not being able to be made whole.

Consider buying anything that turns out to be a lemon. You're usually just skrewed. The only exceptions that I know of to anything at all is product recalls that are recalled for health/safety reasons. In fact, short of it being something like a car defect (airbag as an example), I'm not even sure if there's a recall on say, your stroller, if you notice it 5 years after the recall if you can get a refund.

I guess I just don't understand why there should be an unending period of return/refund. Everything else belongs to some time frame. Why is this the exception to the rule?

 

New Bourbon County Stout Dead Maus Flavor! Extra Special Release! $500 a Bottle! Has an extra exclusive download of an exclusive Dead Maus Track.

 

gets labeled as a new bourbon county rare..... price increases three fold.