A court in Turkey has rejected a claim by a man who said that a graphic cigarette-pack warning included a picture of him in hospital with a breathing tube in his mouth, according to a Hurriyet Daily News story.
The man, who lives in the western province of Tekirdağ and who was identified only as İbrahim A., had sued five tobacco companies in 2012.
He had asked for TL302,000 in compensation for the use of the picture without his permission.
According to the plaintiff, the photo was taken in a state hospital’s intensive care unit where he had been taken after suffering breathing problems in June 2009.
But attorneys for the tobacco companies said the man in the picture was not İbrahim A. “The picture [on the cigarette packs] was dated to 2005 and picked from the European Commission’s reference list,” they said.
The court announced its verdict this week, citing an expert report and saying that whereas the man pictured on the packs was a ‘bit similar to the plaintiff’, ‘it was not him’.
In dismissing the case, the court stressed the ‘mismatch’ between the date the picture on the packs had been taken and the date İbrahim A. had been hospitalized.
Picturesque questions
