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Health & Fitness

Mouse in Mountain Dew can lawsuit is over – finally

Mouse in a Mountain Dew can settlement illustrates the threat of junk lawsuits to small businesses.

It took three years, but the infamous mouse in a Mountain Dew can lawsuit finally has ended with an undisclosed settlement. The lawsuit originated from an incident in 2008 involving a Madison County man who found a mouse in a Mountain Dew can he purchased from a vending machine at his workplace in Wood River.

He said he drank from the can and immediately became violently ill. The contents of the can were poured into a Styrofoam cup and it was there that the dead mouse was discovered.

PepsiCo’s response to the lawsuit created a national buzz when it was learned that the soft drink company insisted that had the mouse been in the can for as long as the plaintiff claimed, the mouse would have turned into a jelly like substance. “The Tonight Show” ran a spoof commercial suggesting that Mountain Dew could be used as pest control product.

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Beyond the implications of what might be in a can of Mountain Dew if it is indeed capable of turning a mouse into a “jelly-like” substance; the reality is that this humorous lawsuit raises some serious questions.

Why should it take three years for something like this to be resolved? Why would our judicial system allow something so absurd to keep moving forward through the judicial process? What does a lawsuit like this mean for small business owners – individuals who do not have the resources that PepsiCo has?

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PepsiCo maintains their denial of liability but the company settled to essentially make the lawsuit disappear. Many small business owners do not have the ability to make these cases go away. A large company like PepsiCo can absorb these costs and keep operating but when small business owners are hit with junk lawsuits – they cannot afford to pay those costs.

Junk lawsuits may create funny headlines and may get some laughs on late night TV but for the hard working entrepreneurs of our country – they are no laughing matter.

 

 

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