Lawsuits

Woman Claims Her Starbucks Came With a Near-Fatal Dose of Cleaning Solution

There are apparently worse things than over-roasting.
There are apparently worse things than over-roasting. Photo: Starbucks

People throw words like “burnt nearly to death” around pretty liberally when talking about Starbucks’ coffee, but normally they don’t mean that’s what the coffee did to their insides. Unfortunately for a Utah woman, she says this happened when a store accidentally gave her a coffee full of Urnex, a cleaning product that baristas use on brewing equipment. According to her lawsuit, Cheryl Kingery drank enough of the poisoned coffee to cause not only throat damage, loss of taste, and lip numbness, but also a really unpleasant-sounding condition known as Burning Mouth Syndrome. She estimates the store’s mistake will set her back $1.5 million in medical bills and lost wages, and is also seeking $500,000 for damages and distress. Amazingly, Kingery’s claim would make her the second person in Utah in the past year to get chemical burns from a casual eatery’s drink. There’s no word on whether anybody else’s coffee at Starbucks that day inflicted the same awful fate, but the company says it’s taking this seriously and “investigating Ms. Kingery’s claims.”

[Salt Lake Tribune]

Woman Claims Her Starbucks Came With a Near-Fatal Dose of Cleaning Solution