Business Notes ACCIDENTS

One day in 1985 Mae Roberts of Holladay, Utah, was having trouble opening a plastic two-liter bottle of Diet 7-Up. So she took a wrench to it, as she had many times in the past, but the results were disastrous. The top shot off like a champagne cork and struck her in the left eye, destroying most of the iris.

Last week a Salt Lake City jury ordered the Seven-Up Co. and a local bottler to pay $10.5 million in damages to Roberts, 82, who is legally blind in her injured eye. A lawyer for Seven-Up said the company would appeal because Roberts used the wrench to twist the cap in the wrong direction.

Roberts' attorney, Colin King, told the jury that hundreds of lawsuits have been filed in the past 15 years over eye injuries resulting from exploding soft-drink caps. Some beverage companies, such as Canada Dry and Schweppes, put labels on their products to tell consumers that they should open the bottles carefully. But, complains King, "many companies still aren't warning people to point the things away from your face when you open them."