A settlement has been reached by Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) regarding a lawsuit filed against them by Suzie’s Brewery Company, an Oregon-based craft brewer and the makers of Suzie’s Organic Hard Seltzer.

On Tuesday of this week an agreement was signed by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon, dismissing the case. 

The lawsuit, which was filed in February, stemmed from an Anheuser-Busch ad campaign for their new beverage, Michelob ULTRA Organic Seltzer. The ad in question, which ran in January during NFL games, claimed Michelob ULTRA to be the “first national USDA certified organic hard seltzer.” Suzie’s began selling USDA certified organic hard seltzer in July of 2020, long before Michelob ULTRA launched their product line. The Oregon brewery took issue with the claim and sued the alcohol giant. 

Shortly after the family-owned brewery filed the lawsuit, Hard Seltzer News ran an exclusive interview with Suzie’s CEO Chris Barhyte. “It’s tough to fight the big guy, right?” Barhyte stated, “I mean, that was a tough thing, but it was so amazingly false, it was kind of an easy decision.”

The case came down to Anheuser-Busch’s use of the word “national.” Suzie’s Organic Hard Seltzer is a USDA Certified Organic product. Their seltzer is certified by Oregon Tilth as part of a nationally recognized program. However, Suzie’s is currently only sold in five states. Anheuser-Busch and Michelob ULTRA insist their use of the word “national” is referring to availability because, unlike Suzie’s, their seltzer is available nationwide. 

Barhyte told Hard Seltzer News that people began questioning whether his company really was nationally certified. He clarified, “[Anheuser Busch was] taking that claim to a level where they thought that maybe I didn’t have a certification for the whole nation — which we do — so, it just made me emboldened and feel like…they have to be corrected.”

Suzie’s was granted a temporary restraining order shortly after their initial filing, which stopped Anheuser-Busch from airing the ad. Regarding the use of the word “national,” according to Barhyte, the ruling “got into some sentence structure, so anyone that [remembers] English from junior high, high school, even elementary school would appreciate…where it talks about modifying adverbs and adjectives.”

The terms of Tuesday’s settlement are not included in public filings and neither company has made a statement regarding the outcome of the case. However, according to the lawsuit, Suzie’s believed the misleading advertisement to be part of a larger plan “unfairly squeezing out its smaller competitors in the organic hard seltzer market.”

In the initial complaint, an attorney for the company writes, “Using the bully pulpit its massive national advertising budget allows, Anheuser-Busch has premiered a new false and misleading advertising campaign aimed at convincing health-conscious drinkers that its new organic hard seltzer is a unique, one-of-a-kind product. To be clear, it is not.”

The specifics of the settlement, though still not public, might serve as a lesson in ethics to even the biggest of companies. As Judge Simon stated upon issuing the restraining order, “Truth matters. Whether the context is politics, science or commercial advertising, dishonesty has consequences.”

Shirani Jayasuriya
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