An Illinois man by the name of Ronald Ball has filed a suit against soda giant PepsiCo. This man claimed to have found a mouse in his Mountain Dew can in 2009. He opened his can, tasted something wrong and spat out a dead mouse.
Ball is seeking damages above $50,000 based upon his experience. More specifically, he is suing for negligence and spoiling evidence. Once Ball found the dead mouse in his drink he sent the carcass to PepsiCo. Once they returned it to him, the mouse was in such bad condition that he is unable to use it as evidence in court. The decision to take PepsiCo to court was precipitated by a PepsiCo representative calling him a liar.
While this trial is particularly damning to the soda bottler, they way they are defending their case might be worse. The basis for Pepsi’s legal defense is based on the idea that a mouse’s corpse could not survive intact for 15 months in a can of Mountain Dew. While there is no empirical data to suggest that Mountain Dew can do to a mouse, there is plenty of data that shows it destroying bones and teeth in a few months.
“I think it is plausible that it could dissolve a mouse in a few months,” said Yan-Fang Ren of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, who has studied the effects of citric acid on bones and teeth. “But dissolving [the mouse] does not mean it will disappear, because you’ll still have the collagen and the soft tissue part. It will be like rubber.”
At this point in time PepsiCo has asked for an extension to the trial’s deliberations. This is an effort to prepare a motion to have the case dismissed. The soda giant is making it a point that there is no way to know that Ronald actually drank mouse soda. If you or a loved one is a victim of a consumer related accident or negligence, please contact an Illinois personal injury lawyer.