Lawsuit Alleging Beer Ads Target Teens Is Tossed Out

In a legal victory for the beverage industry, a Los Angeles judge has dismissed a class-action suit accusing beer giants Anheuser-Busch Cos. and Miller Brewing Co. of encouraging underage drinking by targeting teens with their advertising.

Under state law, ruled Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman, regulating alcohol ads is the job of the Department of Alcoholic Beverages Control, not the courts.

In any case, he said, the suit had failed to identify beer ads that were literally false. Further, plaintiffs failed to show how they’d suffered any direct harm as a result of beer marketing campaigns, the judge wrote.

Filed last February, the suit is known as the Goodwin case after lead plaintiffs Lynne and Reed Goodwin of Tulare County, whose 20-year-old daughter Casey was killed in 2003 by a teenage drunk driver.

Beer and spirits makers face similar class-action suits in Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina and the District of Columbia that allege they use sexually charged ads to induce illegal drinking by teens. Lichtman’s ruling has no direct bearing on those cases, but could discourage the filing of additional suits.

Steve Berman, lead attorney for the Goodwins, said Monday that the decision was no surprise given Lichtman’s skeptical questions during arguments Thursday on the motion to dismiss.

“I think [Lichtman is] just dead wrong,” Berman said. “We’ll appeal it, and we’re highly confident that we’re going to win.”

Kristin Kaplan Wolfe, assistant general counsel for Miller Brewing, applauded the ruling: “The courtroom is not the place to address the problems associated with illegal underage drinking.”

That should be done “through effective law enforcement and having parents talk to their kids about not drinking -- and certainly by having people not drive drunk,” Wolfe said.

Lichtman’s ruling dismissed claims of public nuisance, unjust enrichment and deceptive advertising. According to one estimate, underage drinking accounts for nearly 20% of U.S. alcohol consumption.

The Goodwins said they had agreed to be lead plaintiffs to push for advertising restraints, rather than seek financial damages.

But Lichtman found they had no standing to sue because they had not established that the companies’ ads played a role in their daughter’s death.

“There is no allegation in the complaint that the teenage drunk driver who killed Casey Goodwin saw any specific advertisements” or “relied on the advertisements to become illegally intoxicated,” the judge wrote.