The Whiskey Reviewer A World of Whiskey, Poured Every Weekday
By Richard Thomas
Another lawsuit alleging deceptive practices in the American whiskey industry crashed and burned in San Diego, California, when U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns dismissed a suit against Jim Beam.
Filed in February, the lawsuit against bourbon-maker Jim Beam, the half-namesake of the Beam Suntory, alleged that the “handmade” claims on the label and in its advertising were false. The lawsuit was part of a wave of such actions that followed an article that appeared last year in The Daily Beast which brought knowledge of how some bottlers were making false or misleading claims of being distillers into the mainstream.
The judge cited the fact that stills and other equipment have always been used to make whiskey, and wrote, “A reasonable consumer wouldn’t interpret the word ‘handcrafted’ on a bourbon bottle to mean that the product is literally ‘created by a hand process rather than by a machine.'”
Yet after targeting Templeton Rye, who many whiskey pundits regarded as the main offender, the lawsuits soon ran off the rails in the name of chasing dollars. Instead of targeting small bottling companies, the bulk of the “deceptive whiskey” lawsuits instead went after companies that were part of major drinks corporations, such as Jim Beam.
Only the lawsuit against Templeton Rye gained any traction, however. Whereas the Iowa-based bottler settled out of court in July, two lawsuits very similar to the Beam case were aimed at Maker’s Mark, and were dismissed for similar reasons.
