Tainted Beer Left Physical, Mental Scars, Suit Asserts

When a customer complained to waiter Dan Jackson that the draft in the glass didn’t look like Budweiser, he took a sip to test the brew.

One week in the hospital, $15,000 in medical bills and three years later, Jackson is ready for a courtroom encounter in which he hopes to persuade a jury that he deserves $300,000 in compensation from the company that distributed the beer to the restaurant.

That one sip of beer, Jackson contends, has left him with throat and intestinal injuries--as well as psychological scars--that have marred his life forever. The lawsuit claims that Jackson sipped beer mixed with a caustic substance, potassium hydroxide.

The substance is routinely used to clean out the plastic tube that connects the refrigerated beer kegs to the tap, according to Andrew S. Hollins, Jackson’s lawyer.

The line in the defunct Huntington Beach restaurant had been cleaned by an employee of Straub Distributing Co. Inc. but apparently not flushed with water to remove the substance, Hollins claims.

“It’s pretty wild,” said Jackson. “I never really thought about how they did it, but I found out real quick.”

Straub has denied liability in the case, according to court documents. The firm’s lawyer, Jack Lucas, declined to comment. Both sides are far apart in efforts to settle the case short of trial.

The accident happened around noon on Feb. 2, 1984, Jackson recalled.

“He was one of the first customers of the day. He said it wasn’t Budweiser, it was too dark.”

“I held it up to the light. I didn’t see any bubbles like you normally would,” Jackson said. “The next thing I knew I couldn’t breathe.”

Jackson was hospitalized for six days. He says he has been unable to hold a steady job since. His physical problems include recurring difficulty swallowing and loss of control over his bowels.

“You try to look for answers, you try to find somebody who can help you,” Jackson said. “It got to the point (that) it’s something I’m going to be living with. I’ve got to accept the fact this is the way it’s going to be.”

Hollins said labels on containers of potassium hydroxide warn that the substance should be kept away from eyes and skin, out of the reach of children, and should not be swallowed.

Jackson is 30 and single. Hollins said “every test possible” has been performed on his client and his conclusion is that Jackson’s “actual physical problems are made worse by the psychiatric component of his injury.”

The throat and abdominal ailments are “intertwined with the psychological injury,” Hollins said. “Dan has a physical injury that is magnified emotionally, magnified any time he thinks of the accident.”

“As far as we are concerned, we don’t care whether the injury is physical or psychological,” Hollins said.

Jackson said the repercussions of the accident have forced him to stop volunteer football coaching in Fountain Valley and were a factor in the deterioration of a serious, intimate relationship with a friend.

“It’s nothing you’d want to go through,” Jackson said. “If somebody offered me half the world to go through this again, I’d have said no thank you.”