Man Finds Geckos Inside His Heineken, Sues After Getting Violently Ill

You definitely don’t want to find mysterious creatures in your drink, especially if they’re still whole reptiles.

Unfortunately, that happened to a man two years ago, and he is now suing Heineken and Kroger in the Orange County Superior Court of California after falling violently ill due to a beer that had a couple of geckos inside of it. The plaintiff, George Toubbeh, had purchased cans of the popular beer from a Ralph’s store (a local chain owned by Kroger) and sipped out of one when he noticed a foul taste and almost immediately experienced intense stomach pain and vomiting. His daughter further examined the can afterward and found two juvenile geckos inside.

The geckos, which had not decomposed, were later identified as leopard geckos, a species not native to the United States but often kept as pets. The lawsuit speculates that the baby reptiles likely got into a Heineken canning facility and got stuck in one of the cans before drowning as the beer gushed down on top of them.

Toubbeh had to make a couple of trips to the emergency room in the days following the incident, and claims to still suffer from anxiety, gastrointestinal symptoms that have not subsided much since the incident, and even post traumatic stress disorder from finding the geckos in his beer.

As a result, Toubbeh is looking for retribution in the form of repayments for his medical treatments and loss of work (since he was unable to go on the job for at least several weeks afterward) for an unknown amount of damages. Four total charges have been filed in the lawsuit against Kroger and Heineken, which include “strict liability” for selling an “unreasonably dangerous” product, breach of an implied warranty claim, negligence, and negligence leading to emotional distress.

Heineken has dismissed the accusation, telling Consumerist that the lawsuit has “no merit.”