In the mid-1980s, Harold and Candance Thorp of Seattle, in the American Pacific Northwest, sued the Jim Beam Brands Co for $4 million. They sought "lifetime assistance" for their son, who was born physically deformed and mentally retarded.
Candance attributed her son's predicament to the effects of Beam's biggest-selling product, a bourbon whiskey, as well she might have: she drank around half a bottle - 10 standard drinks or so - daily during her pregnancy, and she said she would not have done so if a bottle label had warned her.
Perhaps surprisingly, the case failed (though the US shortly thereafer became the first country to require alcohol containers to carry health warning labels). Even in a jurisdiction so given to finding someone to blame - and hold legally liable - for everything, the jury must have detected that the Thorps' plight was self-inflicted.
It is a case that some relatives of Natasha Marie Harris, the Invercargill mother of eight who died two years ago, would do well to ponder. A coroner found the 30-year-old drank at least seven litres a day of Coca-Cola and family members - with the conspicuous exception of Harris' sister - reportedly want the soft-drink manufacturer to put health warning labels on their bottles.
This long after the event, such an attitude cannot be ascribed to a grief-stricken loss of perspective, so it's worth wondering at their logic.
