We live in a society

"This lemonade has been actively killing people with caffeine overdose"

@rugburn : man I gotta get me some of this stuff

Part of it also is that Panera didn't clearly market it as caffeinated. The only indication that it was caffeinated was that it was marketed as "charged lemonade." You could go to their website, and the website says it's caffeinated, but the website only says that it contains the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee (which is markedly untrue).

It was only after the media started reporting on the deaths that Panera started saying that it was an energy drink. In other words, Panera is entirely at fault for those deaths.

It's like one cup of coffee in a single lemonade. If you get the extra large, it's like one extra large cup of coffee in a single extra large lemonade. The actual amount of caffeine is hardly the issue, just the fact that people are way less likely to understand how much caffeine they're getting from lemonade compared to coffee.

This drink only has like 40mg more caffeine than the same volume of coffee.

Keeping in mind that till recently it was common for the lemonade to be available where people could get their own refills. Also containing guarana, not as many people (including myself) would immediately recognize it as a simulant or have some kind of reference to their personal tolerance for intake.

"Brown, 46, had an unspecified chromosomal deficiency disorder, a developmental delay and a mild intellectual disability. He lived independently, frequently stopping at Panera after his shifts at a supermarket, the legal complaint says. Because he had high blood pressure, he did not consume energy drinks, it adds.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Brown’s mother, sister and brother less than two months after Panera was hit with a separate lawsuit regarding Sarah Katz, an Ivy League student with a heart condition who died in September 2022 after she drank a Charged Lemonade. That lawsuit, first reported by NBC News, called the beverage a “dangerous energy drink” and argued that Panera failed to appropriately warn consumers about its ingredients, which include the stimulant guarana extract.

Panera has advertised its Charged Lemonade as “Plant-based and Clean with as much caffeine as our Dark Roast coffee.” At 390 milligrams of caffeine, a large, 30-fluid-ounce Charged Lemonade has more caffeine in total than any size of Panera’s dark roast coffee, the legal complaints say. The large cup contains more than the caffeine content of standard cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined, plus the equivalent of nearly 30 teaspoons of sugar, the complaints say."

And known health issues that are negatively affected by stimulants.

It's like trying to blame coke or Pepsi because a diabetic died after drinking almost a gallon of soda.

Calling it Lemonade might prove to be a problem because there's an understood meaning for the word lemonade that doesn't involve caffeine. They could have marketed it as lemon-flavored but calling it lemonade and putting it next to the regular lemonade could be construed as them trying to hide the caffeine content from consumers.

So what if the content was listed. That's far from their only legal obligation

Haven’t seen the tag, but note dispensers were moved behind registers at some locations after the first death/lawsuit.