Two Men Lose their Lawsuit against In-Bev (Goose Island)

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Case in point: We’ve always enjoyed Goose Island’s classic Bourbon County Brand Stout. Long revered as the godfather of American barrel-aged stouts, there’s quite a lot about the genesis of the beer in Noel’s book, but what’s never changed is our appreciation for the liquid in the glass. Even as the idea of “bourbon barrel-aged stout” went from fantastical in the ‘90s to pedestrian in the modern beer industry, that beer has remained one of the premier examples of the style. In fact, the last time we blind-tasted barrel-aged imperial stouts in 2017, BCBS finished at #5 out of 144 beers. That’s how good it still is, and we respect it as a result

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The one big exception, as most craft beer geeks are aware, was in 2015. That was the year that the barrel-aging program at Goose Island stumbled, after greatly expanding in size and scope. That year’s batch of BCBS suffered from an infection of lactobacillus acetotolerans, an unwanted bacteria that led to sour, rancid off-flavors in four different variations of 2015 BCBS.

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 In fact, according to Noel’s book, the company actually ended up giving much more money away in terms of refunds than there actually was BCBS sold, implying that many fake refunds were collected

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However, that wasn’t good enough for certain customers. Jeff Roach and Scott Kaplan, two residents of Massachusetts, brought a lawsuit against Goose Island in Feb. 2017, saying that they had been unable to get refunds during the offered windows because the process was “underpublicized and available for an unreasonably short period of time.” Each had bought a large amount of the beer—Roach spent $600 on about 40 bottles of various BCBS variants, and Kaplan bought 15 of his own. Understandably, the men were angry about buying that muchinfected beer, although one would think that logically this would have made them very eager to take advantage of the refund window … which they did not.

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The truth, however, comes out in court. According to a story—once again by Noel in the Chicago Tribune, because that only makes sense—Goose Island responded to the lawsuit from Roach and Kaplan with a combined offer of $8,000, which would have been $5,000 for Roach and $3,000 for Kaplan—”the maximum amount potentially available to them … plus additional funds to cover court costs and attorneys’ fees,” according to the brewery’s legal team.

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Well, that’s not what Roach and Kaplan did. Instead, their lawyers returned the checks, saying that they wanted to press forward with a class action lawsuit in which more wronged parties would presumably come aboard. Or in other words: They saw dollar signs and hoped to get even more than a 10-times return on their initial expenditure.

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 A U.S. District Court judge has officially dismissed the lawsuit, stating that Goose Island “had attempted to refund them the maximum amount possible.” The brewery’s lawyers argued that “Kaplan and Roach’s claims are moot because Goose Island has unconditionally offered all of the relief that plaintiffs seek and there is no more relief that the court could provide.”

And damn it, they were right. The judge agreed, and the case has been dismissed. 

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