Poland Spring Water is a ‘a colossal fraud perpetrated against American consumers’ by parent company Nestle, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.
The class action suit, filed in federal court in Connecticut, alleges that the supposed ‘100% natural spring water’ advertised on Poland Spring bottles is actually just common groundwater that doesn’t meet the federal definitions.
It also claims that the real Poland Spring ‘ran dry nearly 50 years ago’ and that Nestle is ‘feigning’ FDA compliance with ‘phony, man made “springs”‘.
Suit: Poland Spring water does not come from Poland Spring – or from any springs at all, according to a class action lawsuit filed against parent company Nestle on Tuesday
The rights to the Maine spring’s water were bought up by Perrier in 1980, and transferred to Nestle when it bought out Perrier in 1992.
But this whole time, the 325-page suit alleges, Nestle has actually been selling purified ordinary groundwater, not the spring water that ‘signifies purity and high quality and commands a premium price.’
Despite claims that it draws its water from ‘eight natural springs’ in the Maine area, the suit says, ‘Poland Spring Water products all contain ordinary groundwater that Defendant collects from wells it drilled in saturated plains or valleys where the water table is within a few feet of the earth’s surface.
‘The vast bulk of that groundwater is collected from Maine’s most populous counties in southwestern Maine, only a short distance from the New Hampshire border.’
This does not comply with FDA regulations that say the water must either come from a spring or be siphoned off from the groundwell that supplies that spring, the suit says.
It also claims that in order to meet the ‘nearly one billion gallons’ of water sold by the company, each of the eight springs would have to flow at 245 gallons per minute – something more akin to a geyser than a spring.
However, it says, there is no evidence that eight such geyser-springs exist; nor evidence that six of the alleged eight springs ever existed.
The other two springs ‘no longer exist,’ the suit says, Poland Spring itself having run dry 50 years ago.
‘Fraud’: The suit says the bottles’ labels are fraudulent, and that Nestle is charging premium prices for filtered groundwater, and lying about nonexistent springs used to collect it
It also says that ‘The “spring” Defendant now claims exists in Poland Spring is at the bottom of a lake. It has never been proven to exist, and the evidence that Defendant itself filed with Maine regulators shows it does not exist.
‘Because the Poland Spring is not a source of its products, Defendant’s use of the “Poland Spring” brand name is unlawful.’
The suit says that the defendants in the class action suit have paid more than they would have otherwise due to the bottles’ ‘false and misleading labels’.
It is demanding ‘damages to refunds of the unjustified premiums they have paid or, alternatively, to minimum statutory penalties under state false advertising laws.’
It also wants all Poland Spring bottles removed from shelves and re-labelled to not reference Poland Spring, ‘100% Natural Spring Water’ or ‘depicting misleading pristine mountain or forest spring scenes.’
Nestle refuted the claims, releasing a statement that read: ‘The claims made in the lawsuit are without merit and an obvious attempt to manipulate the legal system for personal gain. Poland Spring is 100 per cent spring water.
‘It meets the US Food and Drug Administration regulations defining spring water, all state regulations governing spring classification for standards of identity, as well as all federal and state regulations governing spring water collection, good manufacturing practices, product quality and labeling.
‘We remain highly confident in our legal position.’
Nestle Waters settled a 2003 Connecticut lawsuit claiming Poland Spring’s water was not sourced deep in the Maine woods.
That suit claimed that hydrogeologists hired by Nestle had found an alternative source for the water that stood over a former trash dump and underneath an illegal disposal site where human sewage was sprayed, W&WD reported in 2003.
Nestle did not admit fault, but agreed to pay $10 million in charity discounts and donations over the next five years.
The lawsuit comes as the Stamford, Connecticut-based company embarks on an expansion in Maine amid rising demand for bottled water.
Nestle is seeking state approval to source water from a public water district well in Lincoln.
Denied: Nestle denied all claims in the suit, which also says that in order to fill the nearly a billion bottles sold each year, the springs would look more like 245-gallon-per-minute geysers