GERMAN COURT SAYS HANGOVERS ARE ILLNESSES IN AN AD CASE
A German court ruled on September 12, 2019, that a hangover is an illness, in a case against a company that sold anti-hangover products and advertised them as preventing or easing the symptoms. The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main decided the case, number 6 U 114/18, under food advertising rules, which bar food products from being sold as a way to prevent or treat disease, BBC reported.
The company was not named in the ruling. It sold a powdered stick product called a “Drink” and a ready-to-drink mixture called a “Shot,” according to LTO.
Its marketing included the phrase “Natürlich bei Kater.” Another line told customers the Drink supplied their bodies with natural, antioxidant plant extracts, electrolytes and vitamins. The law firm TWW.LAW said the target audience was primarily young people who drink alcohol while partying.
An association that safeguards its members’ commercial interests and competition rules took the company to court, according to TWW.LAW. The Frankfurt Regional Court sided substantially with the plaintiff on June 8, 2018. The company appealed, and the higher court upheld that decision.
Even a small disruption counts
To decide whether the company had been promising to treat an illness, the judges first had to decide what an illness is. They went broad.
“By an illness, one should understand even small or temporary disruptions to the normal state or normal activity of the body.”
Headaches, nausea and tiredness fit that description, the court said, and those are the symptoms the company claimed its shots and powders could cure.
The court also rejected the idea that a hangover is just the body having an off day. In its words, hangover symptoms “do not occur as a result of the natural ‘up and downs’ of the body, but as a result of the consumption of alcohol, a harmful substance,” CNN reported.
It did not matter that the symptoms often fade without medical treatment, LTO reported. The court also pointed to “Veisalgia” as the medical term for a hangover, according to TWW.LAW.
It was never about calling in sick
Despite how the headlines read, nobody got a note for Monday morning out of this. The court was ruling on advertising, and the rule it applied was blunt.
“Information about a food product cannot ascribe any properties for preventing, treating or healing a human illness or give the impression of such a property.”
The practical result landed squarely on the company. The court barred it from claiming its products could prevent or alleviate hangovers, LTO reported.
The ruling does not address employment law or how employers should treat hangover-related absences. CNN framed it as validating an excuse workers around the world have used the morning after drinking, but that was CNN’s spin, not the court’s.
The timing was nicely on theme. BBC noted the story came days after Munich’s Oktoberfest opened, with its caption placing the opening weekend on September 22, 2019.
CNN also reported that there is probably no real hangover cure. The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says the only way to prevent a hangover is not to drink. Physicians cited by CNN said water and foods rich in vitamin A, potassium and zinc may help replace nutrients or ease dehydration. They added that the “hair of the dog” may delay symptoms, but they may return later.
As of December 2019, the judgment was not yet in force, according to a newsletter from Eurofins.
