The Class Action Lawsuit

Memoir

On November 16, 2001, my world changed forever. My eighteen-year-old son died in a car accident and my family literally went into shock. I took the rest of the year off, and my family lived in numbness and limbo. I went back to work at the beginning of the New Year, and the first hour I was in my office a corporate accountant told me to get back to work and get over it. I hung up the phone and wondered how someone could be so cold and cruel. I am a work alcoholic, always working full steam. I went back to work and shut everything out, the grief, pain, and shock. To make matters worse there were rumors we were about to face a class action lawsuit.

On January 28^th I had members of our executive team at a spring site thirty miles from my office, which was located at the company museum. My staff called me and said that a small bus of suspicious men had trespassed on our spring property, and acted strangely in the museum. The executive vice president with me at the time told me she thought they were a group of torte lawyers who were planning a class action lawsuit against the company. We all piled into my car and headed back to my office. As I drove, my staff updated me. I called the county sheriff and informed him I had pictures of the group trespassing on our property, and security cameras had caught one of them taking a plant tour video out of a museum exhibit and copying it on his laptop. This video was proprietary and copyrighted.

I had the group arrested and found out the main lawyer was a famous tort lawyer, who was in partnership with two other tort lawyers; the kind that flies around in their corporate jets. So began a journey where I observed the best and worst of lawyers, people, and my own company’s executive team. I found myself in the ultimate conundrum. I was forced to keep my balance when constant pressures met me in every direction; even at home. I was moving through a multidimensional space of tightropes. I had to find ways to influence the media, lawyers, government officials, and the public. All the while trying to deal with my executive team, and all the conundrums that came from trying to keep them content with the work I was doing. The company made me the point person for the lawsuit. I was to handle everything on the ground. This meant I was on the video release to inform the public, deposed by twelve lawyers, met with government officials, and interviewed by thirty-five media outlets, which included all of the top national television, radio, paper, and magazines. I had to act decisively in a world of ambiguity. This ended up being a three hundred-million-dollar class action lawsuit, with a two-billion-dollar brand and twenty-five thousand jobs at stake. I received death threats daily,

This group of tort lawyers made their money by suing large corporations for a big payout. To them, it did not matter if they were wrong, the truth did not matter. They would spin a story for a big payout. They all used the same plaintiff for every case. I’m sure they made good money too, because they were ruthless, and would do anything to win.

This all came about because of quality control and meeting the demands of products being on the grocery store shelf. I talk about this extensively in the quality control chapter, so I will not go in-depth here. FDA defines spring as coming to the surface on its own pressure. To meet HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) compliance, you have to show that you comply with seven steps. These are the food-grade materials you use, sanitation, and testing. When you let spring, water come into a catchment, that catchment must meet the HACCP materials list, and be regularly sanitized and tested to be free of any contamination. Including air-born bacteria. In 1995, a revision was made to the bottled water laws, stating that a borehole (well) can be drilled in the vicinity of the spring, and it has to correlate to the spring. If you pump the well it should register in the spring, but you cannot dry the spring up. In addition, the water chemistry has to match. The state departments of natural resources will determine how much water can be removed, and approve the long-term monitoring of the site.

At the time I had several spring owners that wanted us to purchase their property. Also, at this time we were building manufacturing plants with spring developments across the country. So, this was not a priority. However, I would often meet with these spring owners. If we changed our equipment, I would sell the old equipment at a low cost to them. I had a great relationship with all of them with the exception of one. This one exception actually made us hesitant to purchase the other springs without long-term monitoring.