I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Should I be derisive of a society that tolerates such obvious frivolous litigation or admire the sheer audacity of the man doing so? Like Oliver Duggan, I would have thought no one would be so dense as to believe that Red Bull gives you actual wings. It’s a euphemism – a fairly old one – that adrenaline is the fight or flight hormone. And as such could be said to give one wings – a metaphor. Metaphors are perfectly reasonable devices to use in advertising. Well, in any sane world they would be. Nor by any stretch of the imagination would one believe that a fizzy drink rich in caffeine and taurine will increase athletic or intellectual performance. It stimulates adrenaline production, so gives you a quick boost when feeling a bit tired. That’s it. No one has ever claimed that it does anything else.
So, is Benjamin Careathers very, very thick and therefore litigating because he believes he was mislead and is too stupid to realise that he wasn’t, or is he just a bit clever and taking on the advertisers at their own game? If so, he played and won. However, once again it tells us something about America’s – and increasingly our own – justice system that allows such litigation to proceed. In any decent system, the defendant would have told Benjamin Careathers where to get off knowing full well that a court would not entertain it. Indeed, they should have held their nerve and taken the chance. Afraid of the possibility of court action, they settled. Now they have set a precedent. And the lawyers win, of course.
Careathers’s suit argued that Red Bull’s marketing campaign was designed to sell the idea that the drink offered a boost beyond that which could be found from, say, a cup of coffee, and that the fact that it doesn’t meant the campaign was, therefore, dishonest. Which seems more like fair comment than a belief in the avian properties of energy drinks.
Red Bull contains caffeine at fairly high concentrations. So much so that the DVSA actively discourage test candidates from drinking it prior to their tests as it adversely affects their judgement. I’ve had students who have been drinking it and certainly their riding was erratic. Personally, I’m not aware of the effect when I drink it, but then, I’m happy enough with a 250ml can. And that definitely gives me a boost that coffee never did. So, no, the advertising was not dishonest.
“And the lawyers win, of course.”
Sole purpose of the legal system both sides of the pond.
PS
Not being pedantic, but it’s a Legal system, not a Justice system.
Both theirs (US) and ours (UK) rarely have anything to do with “Justice”.
What I will be interested to see is the look on the litigant’s face when he finally discovers that you can’t buy pills that fix stupidity at any price, let alone the $10 he’s won in damages…