QVC spokesmodel Susanne Thomson sues Nestle over exploding San Pellegrino bottle

A threat to Susanne Thomson’s on-air career at QVC was lingering in her basement — in the form of a San Pellegrino bottle.

The glass sparkling-water bottle sat as part of a six-pack in her Bucks County home for three weeks, seemingly waiting for the right moment to strike. And the moment arrived on Aug. 12, 2023.

That’s when the spokesmodel for the home shopping TV channel placed the six-pack on her kitchen counter and one of the bottles exploded, lacerating her right wrist, according to a lawsuit filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas last week.

Thomson and her husband, Blair Thomson, sued the Swiss food-conglomerate Nestle, which owns the San Pellegrino brand, alleging the bottle exploded due to a defect.

Since her injury, Thomson has undergone surgeries on her right wrist, the complaint said, most recently in January. But her hand remains scarred, and Thomson continues to experience pain and her ability to move her hand is limited.

The injury is particularly devastating considering Thomson’s line of work, in which as a spokesmodel she demonstrates products such as lotions and creams on TV, said J.B. Dilsheimer, the Stampone O’Brien Dilsheimer Holloway attorney representing her.

“Her hands are essential to what she does, not just that they work but also how they look,” Dilsheimer said.

Thomson lost an unspecified amount of income due to her wound. She’s still at QVC, but doesn’t work as much as she had before or fulfill the same tasks, Dilsheimer said. The lawsuit asks for damages that exceed $50,000, which is the limit for compulsory arbitration in the Philadelphia court.

The complaint also accuses The Giant Company, which owns grocery stores throughout the East Coast, including the one in Quakertown where Thomson bought the San Pellegrino six-pack, of negligence.

Nestle and Giant did not respond to requests for comment.

Dilsheimer said that Thomson kept parts of the bottle, and that he is working with forensic experts to analyze the glass in an attempt to determine the cause of the explosion. For example, whether some areas of the bottle were too thin to sustain the pressure of the carbonated liquid.

The complaint relies on a legal doctrine called res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for “the thing speaks for itself.” The doctrine has old roots in European legal systems, but has gained footing in the United States after a 1944 case in which a California server was injured by a bottle of Coca-Cola that spontaneously exploded.

Even though attorneys for the server couldn’t prove that there was a defect in the specific bottle, the Supreme Court of California sided with her, with then-Chief Justice Phil Gibson saying the conclusion that it was defective was sound because “properly prepared bottles of carbonated liquids do not ordinarily explode when carefully handled.”

The complaint filed on behalf of Thomson argues similarly that the rouge San Pellegrino bottle was properly handled and stored in the Thomson household, so it speaks for itself that a bottle that was not defective shouldn’t explode.

“Had the Product not been defectively manufactured and included the proper warnings, Plaintiff, Susanne Thomson, would not have suffered the resulting injuries,” the complaint says.