A Rhode Island woman has filed a lawsuit against Panera Bread, claiming that the restaurant chain’s caffeinated lemonade led to “permanent cardiac injuries.”
NBC News reports that 28-year-old occupational therapist and former athlete Lauren Skerrritt had no preexisting health issues, and regularly participated in obstacle course races. The complaint, filed on Tuesday afternoon, asserts that she now relies on daily medication and has heart issues following an incident at a Panera Bread restaurant in Greenville, Rhode Island.
Skerritt is reportedly the third person to sue the company over its “charged lemonade,” which is alleged to have caused numerous medical conditions.
Skerritt’s lawsuit stated that she drank 2½ “Charged Lemonade” drinks on April 8, and then started experiencing heart palpitations. The following day, she was rushed to an emergency room and learned she had atrial fibrillation.
According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, atrial fibrillation is a medical condition that causes irregular heartbeats, and leads to around “158,000 deaths each year.”
Court documents indicate that Skerritt was treated at the hospital and released, but now has “recurrent episodes of rapid heartbeat that occur suddenly and without pattern.”
“Lauren continues to experience supraventricular tachycardia with associated shortness of breath, palpitations, brain fog, difficulty thinking and concentrating, body shakes, and weakness,” the complaint read.
Two preceding lawsuits against the company, filed in October and December, attributed the deaths of an Ivy League student with a heart condition and a Florida man with a chromosomal deficiency disorder. Both plaintiffs drank the same drink as Skerritt.
According to the Washington Post, Charged Lemonade includes up to 390 milligrams of caffeine per 30 ounces, which is “four times the amount found in a cup of coffee.”
“It clearly demonstrates that this is a dangerous drink,” Skerritt’s lawyer, Elizabeth Crawford, said. “A reasonable consumer, in a place like Panera Bread, with a drink like lemonade, with no underlying conditions — how would they ever believe that product was unsafe?”
Meanwhile, Skerritt and her husband, Christopher Skerritt, who is also a plaintiff, said they had to postpone having children because “she will have a high-risk pregnancy and may have complications during the pregnancy.”
“Their entire marriage, their plans, everything has been altered because she no longer can do the types of physical activity that they used to do before,” Crawford added. “That’s creating an entirely new normal for what they thought was going to be their life.”
Pantera Bread has not publicly commented on the current lawsuit, but a representative for the company described the previous two lawsuits as “equally without merit,” New York Post reports.
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[Feature Photo: Lauren Skerrritt/Elizabeth Crawford; Skerritt Family]
