Lawyers are coming after our milk and our water. What’s next, our beer?

As the Sun Journal’s Trevor Maxwell reports today, lawyers in Boston and Alabama have filed a bevy of lawsuits against Poland Spring water. Actually, the suit is against Nestle Waters N.A., which owns and operates the bottling operation in Poland.

The suits make a lot of allegations. It accuses the bottler of false advertising, they say the water doesn’t really come from springs and that there is a high potential for contamination. These lawyers, who have made a living going after the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Piper Jaffrey, Enron and the tobacco industry, also say that Nestle has duped state regulators. They make the case that Poland Spring’s community stewardship creates a conflict of interest for state regulators. Because the company provides jobs, pays taxes, bottles water from state land and helped fund improvements to Range Ponds State Park, the state’s regulators are compromised.

The state hasn’t taken the insults lightly. Nancy Beardsley, from the State Drinking Water office in Augusta, defends Poland Spring and the state’s system for monitoring the bottled water industry. She says Poland Spring is in complete compliance and goes beyond what is required by law or regulation.

About the charges against Poland Spring: “Those are incorrect statements,” Beardsley said. “Based on all the information we have, and the history we’ve had with Poland Spring, we have no evidence of any compliance or contamination issues. We have many checks and balances.”

Last week, we learned that Monsanto had filed suit against Oakhurst Dairy, also making claims of false advertising. Monsanto says the Oakhurst marketing effort that guarantees milk free from artificial growth hormones misleads consumers. In fact, farmers who provide milk to Oakhurst pledge not to use growth hormones on their herds. That’s the truth. Consumers then decide what that means to them.

Make no mistake, these are not small companies beset by agitators from away. Nestle and its Poland Spring brand are big business. And there’s big money at stake.

But that doesn’t mean these two legal actions aren’t ridiculous. They are.

Will some enterprising legal mind claim that there aren’t enough eagles on Eagle Lake to justify the name? Maybe our blueberries are really dark-purpleberries? Do Maine lobsters move around with a Canadian gait? Does Shipyard beer need to shift production to Bath Iron Works?

It’s hard to take the suits against Poland Spring and Oakhurst seriously. But they are serious affairs. Regardless of how these matters are settled, much money will be spent and much time wasted. The reputation of good people will be called into question.

No doubt there are real cases of corporate malfeasance that exist. We don’t believe either of these cases rise to that level.


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