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Coca-Cola worked out a deal yesterday where they will pay off four plantiffs $500 each plus lawyers fees because two of their soft drinks - Fanta Pineapple and Vault Zero - were discovered to contain ingredients that can form cancer-causing benzene.
And Coke will give them newer versions of the soda that now has less of the cancer-causing chemicals.
Mmmmmm.
While we're grateful to the plaintiffs for suing the sugar water giant, the incredibly low settlement almost makes it look like Coke's believable when they say that they gave them $500 to just stop the madness since millions of gallons of pop have been ingested and no one has gotten Fanta Cancer.
Coke sold 7.7 million cases of its relatively new Vault Zero in the United States between February and December of 2006, according to the settlement. Coke sold 27.4 million cases of Fanta Pineapple from January 2003 to August 2006. By comparison, Coke sold nearly 1.8 billion cases of Coca-Cola Classic last year. Coke spokesman Ray Crockett said the soft drink maker's products posed "no risk to consumers" and that the lawsuit was groundless. Crockett said settling the lawsuit was the "most expedient way to get the issue behind us." - Austin Statesman
