On March 9, 2024, Luke Adams, 18, stopped by a Panera Bread and grabbed a chicken sandwich and a large Charged Lemonade, according to a recently filed lawsuit. Later that day, he and some friends went to a movie, and while at the theater, Adams began making “unusual sounds," the lawsuit reads. Luckily, two nurses and a cardiologist were also attending the movie and they performed CPR and used an automated external defibrillator (AED) on the teen, .
“He was about as close as you can come to being dead,” Dr. Andrew Pogozelski, chief of cardiology at Allegheny Health Network Forbes Hospital in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, who treated Adams, told NBC News. “This was about as unlucky as you can get for this to happen to an 18-year-old, otherwise healthy person — but as lucky as you can get for people in the movie theater to know what they were doing.
” Adams and his family filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania against Panera related to its Charged Lemonade, which has 237 milligrams of caffeine with ice, .
after a "recent menu transformation," a spokesperson said earlier this month. At the time, they declined to answer questions about whether previous lawsuits played a role in removing the item from menus. This is at least the fourth lawsuit against the company related to the beverage, according to NBC News.
Panera has denied wrongdoing in legal documents and did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the lawsuit. Adams’ mother, Lisa .
