Utopia Sparkling Water began appearing in the middle of the hot San Antonio summer of 1985, along with a strong advertising campaign. It wasn't long before the challenge to Scoville's Artesia spilled over into the columns of Texas newspapers. "Our water is from a place called Utopia. It's spring water. That has some mystique," Bownds boasted to Austin American-Statesman, in an article headlined "Water War Heats Up." Then, referring to the competition, Bownds said, "His water is well water. There's only so much you can say about a well. . . . I'm not knocking it, but it's not much different than San Antonio drinking water."
"Utopia is just a very weak copy of Artesia," Scoville snapped. "Our product has a real clean, crisp taste. I find that Utopia has a bitter aftertaste. Maybe that's because he hauls his water to a bottling place where they bottle all kinds of soft drinks."
The next day, Scoville had his lawyer send a letter to Utopia, accusing it of infringement of Artesia's copyright, and threatening legal action. It was a sound strategy, and one that, in hindsight, Scoville should have stuck with. But that was hardly his style: he had a few letters to write of his own. He wrote to people like Lenwood L. Scholtz, of the Texas Department of Health, and Jim Mattox, the state's attorney general, charging that Utopia had lied when it claimed to be "natural and pure sparkling"; as with every other sparkling water, carbon dioxide was added during bottling. To the largest nightclub owner in Texas Scoville wrote, "Mr. Bownds has misrepresented his product. . . . I feel your customers should not be duped, nor should you!" To restaurateurs and merchants he insisted that Utopia was worse than a copycat: it was a hazard to the consumer because of the possible pollutants on the surface of the spring. KTFM, a local radio station, and Rollins Outdoor Advertising Inc., the company responsible for Utopia's billboards, received letters putting them on notice that Scoville planned to seek "legal remedies" against Utopia; he demanded that they kill the spots and tear down the signs. "Please keep me posted," he wrote the state's food brokers, "so we can bury this product!" To many, Scoville seemed like a man possessed.
Utopia's sales had started strong: in the first week, H.E.B. Food Stores, a large food chain in Texas, sold 10 times more than they had projected. But by the end of the month, Bownds was finding that he was not expanding as fast as he had planned. There was nothing he could put his finger on. It was just that food brokers now seemed hesitant to return his telephone calls; and restaurants that had initially agreed to carry his water suddenly backed out.
He discovered the problem soon enough, when the general manager called from KTFM. The radio station had just received the letter from Scoville. "I had expected competition, "Bownds remembers. "I had expected the big boys to outspend me 200 to one. But those letters were beyond what I expected.
"I just wanted to be left alone. But the best way to rile me up is to attack my livelihood. It's in my blood to be feisty. It's a Texas tradition."
His lawsuit was filed late in August in Texas District Court. In a 16-page complaint, Bownds outlined Scoville's activities, including the letters and comments to the press. Bownds charged that Scoville's comments "were false, were known . . . to be false, and were made with the malicious intent of destroying goodwill in [Utopia's] products, slandering [Utopia], and unfairly compromising [Utopia's] position in the marketplace." The letters, he said, were "a systematic program of interfering with the existing and prospective contractual or business relationships." Furthermore, by using the mails to interfere with interstate commerce, Bownds accused Scoville of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Bownds asked the court to enjoin Scoville from continuing with his campaign, and to award him actual and punitive damages.
Scoville met the challenge with bluster, telling the local papers he had his own plans for a countersuit.And yet, despite the failure of Utopia to gain more than a foothold in the local market, the situation seemed to be slipping from Scoville's control. His letters had left bad feelings within the business community. "I just hate to see that kind of conflict," complained George Farias, the bottled-water buyer for San Antonio's Sun Harvest Farms supermarket chain. "We're disgusted," was how J. R. McIntyre, the general manager of Rollins Outdoor Advertising, summed up the reaction. From Utopia, Bownds continued to charm the local press, which took a keen interest in the story, while Scoville stayed hunkered in his bunker. In conversations with several local reporters, Scoville seemed increasingly hostile and strident. "I was used to being the underdog," he explained. "We had played on the theme of the underdog versus number one heavily. Now we were number one ourselves." Being the overdog required a different strategy. And Scoville never discovered one.
Up in Greenwich, Conn., Ron Davis might have been excused if he'd allowed himself to gloat. For years, Rick Scoville had been taking potshots at Perrier. Now Artesia's water wizard was getting a taste of his own medicine.Scoville had written Davis, as president of the Perrier Group of America, looking for an ally in his latest crusade against Utopia. But as president of the International Bottled Water Association, the Perrier executive found it more diplomatic to take the high ground.
