BATON ROUGE – A Baton Rouge woman says the California wine industry is knowingly selling wine that contains inorganic arsenic, a highly toxic poison.
Laura Marvin filed a class-action lawsuit March 23 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana against The Wine Group Inc. and some two dozen other defendants in the California wine industry, alleging product liability, negligence, unjust enrichment and breach of warranty.
According to the complaint, most wineries limit the amount of arsenic contained in their wines to trace levels, those named in the lawsuit market wines containing as much as 500 percent more than what is considered toxic to humans. As a result, the suit claims these winemakers are knowingly putting consumers at risk for serious illness.
Marvin seeks a jury trial, an injunction to stop the sale of toxic wine, compensatory and punitive damages, and reimbursement for litigation costs. She is represented by attorney Daniel E. Becnel Jr., Matthew Moreland and Salvadore Christina Jr. of the Becnel Law Firm LLC in Reserve.
U.S. District Court for the Middle District Case number 2:15-cv-02890