The inmates are once again running the asylum. The asylum in this case is a prison, the Idaho State Correctional Institution.

But the inmates are inmates – and potentially wealthy ones at that, Boise TV station KBOI reports:

U.S. District Court records … confirm that a civil suit was filed Dec. 10 by inmates Keith Allen Brown, and co-plaintiffs Jeremy Joseph Brown, Cory Alan Baugh, Woodrow John Grant and Steven Todd Thompson.

The five are seeking damages to the tune $1 billion from makers of beer, wine, and spirits whose products they claim led them to a life of crime. According to The Idaho Statesman, chief litigant Brown wrote in the suit he spent a “great deal of time in prison” due to “situations in which alcohol played a major role,” and that he was never “informed that alcohol was habit forming and addictive” before he became an alcoholic.

The suit names a number of major brewers – among them Miller Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch Co., and Adolph Coors Co. It also names Gallo Winery and Brown-Furman Co., distributor of Finlandia vodka, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, and Korbel California Champagne. Ten companies are named in all.

The suit further alleges that as a result of drinking alcohol without recognizing its addictive properties, the plaintiffs performed acts that “caused them to become incarcerated for a great portion of their lives”:

The plaintiffs claim if they had not been addicted to the products sold by the defendants that they would have lead normal lives as productive members of society.

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