Sarah Katz: Panera Bread charged lemonade & lawsuit filed by her parents

Sarah Katz, an Ivy League student with a heart condition lost her life on Sept. 10, 2022 at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

According to a lawsuit sighted first obtained by NBC, Sarah died after she drank Panera Bread’s Charged Lemonade, a large cup of which contains more caffeine than cans of Red Bull and Monster energy drinks combined.

The legal complaint, which was filed Monday morning in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas  calls the beverage a “dangerous energy drink” and argues that Panera failed to appropriately warn consumers about its ingredients.

The suit was filed on behalf of the parents of Sarah Katz, 21, a University of Pennsylvania student who had taught CPR in underserved communities and had been a research assistant at a children’s hospital. Katz had a heart condition called long QT syndrome type 1 and avoided energy drinks at the recommendation of her doctors, according to the filing.

In a statement Monday afternoon, a Panera spokesperson said: “We were very saddened to learn this morning about the tragic passing of Sarah Katz, and our hearts go out to her family. At Panera, we strongly believe in transparency around our ingredients. We will work quickly to thoroughly investigate this matter.”

Katz bought a Charged Lemonade from a Panera Bread restaurant in Philadelphia on Sept. 10, 2022, according to the suit. She went into cardiac arrest hours later, said her roommate and close friend, Victoria Rose Conroy.

“She was very, very vigilant about what she needed to do to keep herself safe,” Conroy said. “I guarantee if Sarah had known how much caffeine this was, she never would have touched it with a 10-foot pole.”

Katz grew up in Jersey City, N.J., and graduated from Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City.

She took a gap year before coming to Penn, as she received a full merit scholarship to learn Mandarin at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, China.

At Penn, Katz studied international relations and health and societies with a minor in East Asian languages and civilizations.