Sarah Katz, 21, had a heart condition and was not aware of the drink’s caffeine content, which exceeded that of cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined, according to a legal filing
The sign says outright that it has as much caffeine as coffee. If drinking an amount of coffee would be too much, drinking that much charged lemonade would be roughly equally too much.
Also, apparently she had a medical condition that meant she shouldn’t be consuming large amounts of caffeine. And she ordered and consumed a large amount of caffeine. That’s what killed her.
This is akin to arguing that a restaurant is responsible if someone with a shellfish allergy orders the shrimp.
More than you get from one lemonade, for a healthy person. Not much less than the FDA recommended maximum per day if we’re talking about the largest size, but the gap between “maximum recommended” and overdose is a reasonable bit. If you’ve ever known someone to drink more than four cups of coffee, or as many energy drinks (or as few as 2 for certain brands), you’ve known someone who exceeded the recommended maximum. You have to go a fair bit past it to have acute issues if you are otherwise healthy.
If you have a medical condition that restricts your diet, it is on you to know what you can and cannot have and on the restaurant to make it clear when something unexpected might contain the thing. I’d argue Panera, by analogizing the amount of caffeine to an equivalent volume of coffee and also giving the explicit numerical amount in each size the drink was offered in did that.
Imagine someone suing a restaurant because they ordered a dish that contains shellfish and they have a shellfish allergy. The menu spelled out that it contained shrimp, but how is anyone supposed to know that shrimp is shellfish?
