Court rejects Turkish man’s claim that his photo was on cigarette packet warning

Özge Eğrikar - ISTANBUL

A court in Turkey has rejected a man who sought compensation by claiming the photo of the person seen on the warning message of cigarette packets was of him with a breathing tube in his mouth at a hospital.

The man in the western province of Tekirdağ, identified as İbrahim A., had sued five tobacco companies in 2012 asking for 302,000 Turkish Liras in compensation for using the photo without his permission.

According to the plaintiff, the photo was taken in a state hospital’s intensive care unit where he had been taken for breathing problems in June 2009.

On the other hand, attorneys of tobacco companies said the man in the picture was not İbrahim A.

“The picture [on the cigarette packets] was dated to 2005 and picked from the European Commission’s reference list,” they said.

“The man on the packets was a bit similar to the plaintiff, but it was not him,” the court announced its verdict this week, citing an expert report.

While dismissing the case, the ruling also stressed the “mismatch” between the date the photo on the packets was taken and the date the man had been hospitalized.