Guns N’ Roses found itself transforming into Guns N’ Roses N’ Lawsuits.

The band released its first album after 17 years just last week, and found itself in a legal battle with soda titan Dr Pepper over a promotional brouhaha.

Dr Pepper came out with a marketing campaign in March that promised a “free soda” to “everyone in America” on one condition: that Axl Rose, lead singer and frontman for Guns N’ Roses, would “finally release his 17-year-in-the-making belabored masterpiece, ‘Chinese Democracy,’ in 2008.”

GN’R consequently released the album last week and Dr Pepper followed through its promise by posting a coupon on its Website for a can of soda. The catch was that fans had only 24 hours to go the Website and print out the coupon.

A lot of GN’R fans and others who wanted a freebie tried to get the coupon that the site got choked with the traffic and crashed. Disgruntled and downright pissed off, some people blamed the band.

“When you go on the blogs and you read the responses from the fans, they associated Axl with this promotion … and blame him for the fact that they didn’t get their free soda,” GN’R lawyer Laurie Soriano said.

That’s when GN’R became GN’RN’L. Soriano sent a letter to Dr P, asking the soft drink company to make good on its offer. According to Soriano said this week, she has yet to hear back from them.

“We’ve gone public with the fact that we are not involved but are trying to clean up the mess,” Soriano said.

Dr Pepper told CNN it had “taken great steps” to keep up its end of the bargain. It said it extended the window for the giveaway from 24 to 42 hours, added a toll-free line to handle consumer requests for the coupons, and even set up an interactive voice recorder to accept coupon requests. These measures are still to actually take effect, though.

“Additionally,” the company said in a written statement, “for those who contacted us in the week after the giveaway about difficulties requesting the coupon, we continued to offer free coupons to address any problems they may have encountered.”

Nonetheless, the band still wants an apology.

“The door to a lawsuit being filed is always open until the fans are taken care of and Dr Pepper has done the right thing,” Soriano said.

[Source]