Court to rule on ‘coffee punch’ case next week

 A NATIONAL Court in Waigani will decide next week whether The National defamed the producer of an alcoholic drink four years ago.

Justice David Cannings deferred judgment to Oct 24 after hearing submissions from the counsel of the newspaper and Vitis Industries.

Vitis alleges that in a report published on May 31, 2010, The National had described “coffee punch” as a dangerous drink as its contents were unknown.

It claimed that by mentioning “coffee punch”, the report was referring to one of its alcoholic products marketed under the name of “Coffee Punch” and that the company had suffered losses as a result.

Yesterday, counsel Marilyn Saroa told the court that the article had damaged her client’s reputation and its relationship with its business partners.

Bill Frizzell, representing The National, said “coffee punch” was a common term among the people when referring to homebrew.

Frizzel said research had shown this. 

He said that the article, based on a workshop in Port Moresby, did not name Vitis.

On Wednesday, the general manager of Vitis admitted that the company had not registered the name of “Coffee Punch”.

In his affidavit, Thomas Hukahu, said his article was based on interviews of people about the effects of homebrew and their own coffee punch concoctions.

He said people would use terms such as “steam”, “punch” or “coffee punch” to refer to homebrew and that the article was aimed at warning the people on the dangers of consuming such alcohol. 

Hukahu added that a search on the Internet would reveal about 55 million web-pages with “coffee punch” recipes.