Portside

A long-running lawsuit involving claims that Poland Spring water has been falsely labeled and deceptively marketed will continue after a Connecticut judge this week denied the parent company’s latest request to throw out the case.

In a detailed and often technical 61-page ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer rejected some claims in the class action suit originally brought by 11 plaintiffs in August 2017. But Meyer said the issue of whether Poland Spring qualifies as “spring water” under laws in several states, including Maine, remains unsettled.

It wasn’t immediately clear Wednesday what would happen next with the case. Lawyers for both sides did not respond to messages.

The suit was filed against Nestle Waters North America, Inc., the former parent company of Poland Spring, which sold that brand and others for $4.3 billion three years ago. The popular brand founded in Maine more than a century ago is now owned by Tampa, Florida-based Primo Brands, but the water is still sourced from numerous locations in western Maine, according to the company.

The company employs hundreds of workers at bottling plants in Poland, Hollis and Kingfield but has sometimes faced local criticism about its business practices.

In the original lawsuit, plaintiffs alleged that “not one drop” of Poland Spring’s bottled water came from a natural spring, and that the actual Poland Spring in Maine “ran dry” long before Nestle bought the brand in 1992. The water, plaintiffs alleged, was nothing more than “ordinary groundwater” from wells. Further, they said the company was deceiving them into overpaying with labels that claimed its bottles contained “100% Natural Spring Water.”

Nestle Waters has called the lawsuit “meritless” from the start and has filed motions for summary judgment to dismiss the case on three separate occasions. In each, the judge has sided with the company on some points but has refused to dismiss the case fully.

Following this week’s ruling, Judge Alker said there are still several claims pending alleging violations of state fair trade practices acts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

According to Alker’s ruling, geologists hired by Nestle in each of the states argued that the company complied with a U.S. Food and Drug Administration rule defining spring water and concluded that each state authorized its sale as “spring water.”

Experts hired by the plaintiffs, meanwhile, said Nestle appeared to use man-made springs and extracted pond water and other surface water, rather than true spring water.

The remaining plaintiffs are seeking damages, but also an injunction that would prevent the company from marketing Poland Spring water as “spring water” in the future.

Nestle Waters faced a similar lawsuit in 2003 when consumers alleged that the company’s advertising suggested that the water in Poland Spring came from a source deep in the woods of Maine when, in fact, the principal source was located near a parking lot.

That suit was settled with Nestle offering about $8 million in consumer discounts and more than $2 million in charitable donations.