Posted on 04/28/2008 7:58:13 AM PDT by mombyprofession
If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.
And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.
Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" - or even the History Channel, for that matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at wzzm13.com ...
Once while getting my muffler fixed I meet the guy who started Mike’s Hard Lemonade, he was preoccupied with his lap top mostly, seemed kinda of a stuffy, smarter than thou type, but I did get in a truth of alcohol, no matter what color, flavor or carbonated, it’s still just poison to the body.
That's the problem in America today. Everyone is afraid of lawyers. They should be afraid of me.
I agree, the name is a hint, but in this day and age, where words often don’t mean what they used to mean, you can’t be sure. And a lot of these “alcopops” are deliberately colored and packaged to look like soda pop. I’m a non-drinker, and when I first saw a six pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade on the shelf, I wondered if it was alcoholic, but I certainly wasn’t sure.
When you go to a supermarket or a convenience store you have to look hard to find soda packaged in a glass bottle with a beer style metal twist cap.
That's because 99% of soda sold in the US comes in a 20 oz. plastic bottle with a short neck and a white plastic twist cap, not a 12 oz glass bottle with a long neck and a metal twist cap. And 100% of the soda sold at ballparks comes either in a plastic bottle of the kind I've just described, or a plastic cup with a lid and a straw.
So, it doesn't look like a soda at all.
Again, he made an honest mistake, but it is not deceptive packaging at all.
www.jonessoda.com
It is bottled in a beer bottle.
No. It is bottled in a lemonade bottle.
Clear beer bottles have yellow, not grey, liquid in them.
So you say.
Neither of us know whether or not this actually is an "upstanding family." And certainly the city workers on the scene had no way of ascertaining that.
CPS, the cop that recommended it and the judge that signed off on it should be facing charges.
What charges should they eb facing? On what evidence?
this is pure and simple abuse of the system. a short interview with the family should have sufficed.
Short interviews have far too often resulted in dead children.
The case of Nixmary Brown is a famous example.
and dont tell me theres little leeway in the law. the decision is based on recommendation of CPS and police.
There is very little leeway, so I will tell you that fact.
CPS and the police, once an incident is reported, cannot say they neglected to follow up because they "had a good feeling" about the situation. There has to be a determination - and the determination has to be made on evidence.
if it was this bad, whats the father being charged with? how much jail time is he facing?
It seems that I was not clear.
It is entirely possible for a parent to have done nothing that creates criminal liability while still being judged an unfit parent. A parent who has a severe illness that impairs their ability to care adequately for a child, for example. A parent whose job requires them to spend long periods of time away from their child, combined with the unreliability of alternative child care arrangements (babysitter fails to show up on numerous occasions, the parent's sister neglects the niece she promised to care for while the parent was working). And so on.
There are whole bunch of do-gooders that disagree with you.
The bottle looks like lemonade to me. I would have guessed that “hard” meant....stronger, tarter flavor. (less sugar, more lemon)
It needs to spelled out right on the front label, if it is an adult beverage!
Maybe as an Archeology professor, he spends his time on learning more important things.
What percentage of US convenience stores and supermarkets carry Jones?
I'll give you a hint: their annual sales are 0.009% of Pepsi's sales.
I don't watch any television, but I see Mike's Hard Lemonade in the beer section of the supermarket, not in the Minute-maid section.
99.999% of sodas are not marketed in such bottles and 99.999% of beers are marketed in such bottles.
Let's be rational.
Maybe. Probably. I know what Mike's is and wouldn't have made the mistake (which I think this was).
Sorry, but I can easily understand how somebody wouldn’t know that Mike’s is an alcoholic drink. It doesn’t taste like an alcoholic drink, either.
The reaction to this was nonsense. The proper reaction, once the waiter/waitress saw the kid drinking it, would have been to simply take it away... And replace it with a regular lemonade. Problem solved.
Wrong.
There are many instances where regional sodas and root beers (Moxy and Jones spring immediately to mind) are bottled in brown glass, EXACTLY like beer. If one is unfamiliar with what a hard lemonade is, one could easily make such an error.
He probably asked for a lemonade, and the clerk behind the counter gave him whatever he had. The Prof did not ask for a hard lemonade, and even if the guy had corrected with "hard lemonade?", it would not have registered if he did not know what it was.
Total cock up by all involved.
The story states that he ordered a lemonade for his son from a vendor and the vendor handed him a Mike's Hard Lemonade, which clearly looks like regular lemonade, including its packaging.
Since the boy showed absolutely no trace of alcohol in his system 90 minutes after the incident, it should have ended there.
West Jefferson Dr. Pepper Bottling
Mail Order Sales? No
Sales At Bottler? Yes
Available At Nearby Stores? Yes
Returnables? No
Bottle Sizes 12 ounces
Products:
7-Up
A&W Root Beer
Big Red
Cheerwine
Cool Mountain
Crush Orange
Diet Cheerwine
Diet Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper
Mt. Dew
Nehi Grape
Nehi Orange
Nehi Peach
Nu Grape
Red Rock Cola
Red Rock Ginger Ale
RC Cola
Sunkist
Welchs Grape
Mail Order Sales? No
Sales At Bottler? No
Available At Nearby Stores? Yes
Returnables? No
Bottle Sizes 12 ounces
Products:
Cheerwine
Diet Cheerwine
And that is just two examples at that website.
For that kind of bottle, try looking in the "Fruit Juice" aisle. The "Fruit Juice" aisle is where you will find non-alcoholic lemonade too.
Mountain Fresh Fruit Juices
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