Nestle faces suit over bottled-water fraud: report

[UpInArms]

Source: Marketwatch

Nestle is set to face a lawsuit over its Poland Spring water brand in the U.S. after a federal judge rejected the company's attempt to dismiss claims that it defrauded consumers by filling Poland Spring water bottles with ordinary groundwater, Reuters reports.

--Consumers from eight U.S. states can now pursue claims that Nestle defrauded them into overpaying for Poland Spring by labeling it as "100% Natural Spring Water", even though "not one drop" came from a genuine legal spring, according to Reuters.


Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nestle-faces-suit-over-bottled-water-fraud-report-2019-03-29?mod=newsviewer_click

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More at Nestle to face lawsuit saying Poland Spring water not from a spring: U.S. judge

“We remain highly confident in our legal position and will continue to defend our Poland Spring brand vigorously against this meritless lawsuit,” a Nestle Waters spokeswoman said in a statement on Thursday. “Poland Spring brand natural spring water is just what it says it is — 100 percent natural spring water.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to the amended complaint, Nestle Waters sells 1 billion gallons of Poland Spring a year in the United States, and “not one drop” of its water “emanates from a water source that qualifies as a genuine legal ‘natural spring.’”

The actual Poland Spring in Maine, which the defendant’s labels said is a source of Poland Spring water, “commercially ran dry” nearly 50 years ago, the complaint said.

[Sherman A1]

1. I wish we could get away from the whole bottled water thing

It makes sense in some situations but mostly it doesn’t.

[Chin music]

4. Fix the pipes and filter the water better. The extra plastic in the bottles is onerous at best.

It's an end around privitization of municipal water when you can't use it except to water your lawn or do the laundry. imho.

[HAB911]

2. AND they probably paid NOTHING to suck it out of the ground

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-09-21/nestl-makes-billions-bottling-water-it-pays-nearly-nothing-for

The Nestle corporation, which markets Zephyrhills and other popular brands, spent a measly $230 for a permit to suck almost 1.5 million gallons daily from the Blue Spring in Madison County.
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article152954739.html

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Not only that

but there was a big brouhaha back in 2017 during California's extreme drought where Nestle was caught extracting far more water from the ground than they had permits for and they basically told California up you (and the court upheld the response). They finally settled last July, where the article noted they were only paying the Forest Service $624 a year for a permit.

[vsrazdem]

3. I'm sure they meant they pulled it out of the ground in Spring.

[Chin music]

6. Or it SPRUNG up from the faucet.

Mr Poland H. Springs house has so many tankers filling up in his driveway, neighbors have become suspicious.

[okaawhatever]

16. LOL. Exactly. nt

[c-rational]

7. i would like to see every public meeting across the country serve only tap water. What we

have done as a nation to our potable water (there is a pot in potable) is IMO disgusting. The fact that there is no outrage over the inability to use water from your faucet to drink is not a good harbinger for how our society and world will act with respect to global warming.

[cstanleytech]

8. Sounds like fraud to me.

After all slapping a label on a bottle of water and promoting it as 100% spring water when it actually is not is fraudulent.

[Honeycombe8]

10. It'll be battled out in court. Just because someone sues doesn't mean it's true. nt

[DENVERPOPS]

12. Good luck

Coors beer used to put "brewed from pure rocky mountain spring water" on every beer, advertisement etc.
They got away with it for decades and decades and decades. Then the Fed's finally stepped in and nailed them for False Advertising and it took them a decade to prosecute Coors to quit using that phrase.

Truth be known, Coors was NEVER brewed with pure rocky mountain spring water. They took all their water from nearby CLEAR CREEK, on of the most polluted rivers in the state......upstream there are a dozen or more small town sewage treatment plants, and worst of all,
the entire upper stretches of the river are nothing but old abandoned gold mines with massive piles of tailings. The rain and snow washes through the tailings and directly into the creek. All kinds of mining's "Methy-Ethyl bad shit" continuously runs off the tailings and down the river to Golden Colorado where the Coors plant uses it to make their beer.

Even during Coors "hay days" of the seventies, many of us in Colorado would never drink the stuff..........

[Honeycombe8]

9. I've always been suspicious of "spring water" and see no value in it.

I prefer distilled or purified water. But how do we know ANY of these waters are what they say they are?

[yaesu]

11. Just a little bit of trivia, they own Gerber Baby Foods also. nt

[Nitram]

13. Meanwhile, Nestle continues to steal water resources worldwide.

The Great Lakes are next.

[Nitram]

14. I do not understand why people buy drinking water in little plastic bottles.

[Snellius]

15. All bottled water in single-use plastic garbage is a fraud.