Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/591609
November 2015 WINES&VINES 19 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS L os Angeles, Calif.—This spring's class action against the California wine industry over the presence of arsenic in wine has been tweaked to seek billions of dollars in civil penalties, among other damages. The law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner LLP filed an amended complaint in California Superior Court on Sept. 16 alleging that California wineries violated the terms of Proposition 65, the Cali- fornia legislation officially known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. Arsenic is an element of chro- mium copper arsenate, a preserva- tive for wooden posts often used in vineyards as well as diatoma- ceous earth used to filter wine. While there's no indication the action's four plaintiffs have suf- fered arsenic poisoning, lab tests of wines from at least 34 vintners detected arsenic levels in some wines that were up to five times the 10 parts per billion allowed for drinking water, but no more than half the Canadian standard for arsenic in wine. (The U.S. has not set a standard for wine.) The complaint names vintners including Sutter Home Winery, The Wine Group Inc. and Treasury Wine Estates Americas Co., among others, and cites 200 anonymous defendants. "Just a glass or two of these arsenic-contaminated wines a day over time could result in danger- ous arsenic toxicity to the con- sumer," the amended complaint states, taking a position refuted by both the Wine Institute and the University of California, Davis. Documents filed with the court state that the defendants' wines have been consumed daily since at least January 2011, and that consumption remains ongoing. The Wine Institute said in a statement sent to Wines & Vines: "The fact that the California law- yers who filed the bogus arsenic in wine lawsuit have amended their complaint with a Prop. 65 violation only serves to underscore that fi- nancial gain—and not consumer safety—is their motivation." The financial damages the law- yers seek are significant, includ- ing both "compensatory damages and restitutionary disgorgement" for "unlawful and deceptive con- duct" associated with the produc- tion and sale of their wines, as well as a civil penalty of $2,500 per day "for every bottle of offend- ing wine manufactured, distrib- uted, marketed and sold without the clear and reasonable warning required by law." In addition to the original de- mands, the amended complaint requests that the defendants "iden- tify and locate each individual to whom the offending wines were sold in the past four years, and to provide a warning to such person that consumption of the offending wines will expose them to chemi- cals known to cause cancer." —Peter Mitham Arsenic Plaintiffs Up Ante Diatomaceous earth is scraped off a vacuum filter in a winemaking facility, where the substance is used to remove solids from wine. NADALIÉ USA 1401 Tubbs Lane Post Office Box 798 Calistoga, CA 94515 Tel. 707 942 9301 Fax. 707 942 5037 info@nadalie.com www.nadalie.com Nadalié France since 1902 Nadalié USA since 1980 NADALIÉ USA, it's also...