This may be funny only to me since it happened in my hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania (BTW, it’s pronounced “redding”) — or near enough, I grew up in a small suburb adjacent to Reading.
Back in January, a 17-year old testified that an adult bought him a case of Miller Genuine Draft but Berks County Court Judge Jeffrey K. Sprecher (obviously no relation to the Sprecher Brewery in Wisconsin) dismissed the charges because “the prosecution had failed to provide the state Liquor Control Board’s list of beers to prove the beverage was beer.” Makes sense to me, I consider Miller Genuine Draft to be not really beer, but a highly-engineered industrial food product. The judge also stated that it was “equally plausible that the defendant purchased a nonalcoholic beverage with a flavor similar to beer.” Clearly, he’s never tasted a non-alcoholic beer.
An appeals court has now overturned that ruling, stating that the minor’s “testimony was more than enough to establish that the beverage he was drinking was a malt or brewed beverage.” Wow, they actually believed a minor would know whether or not he was drinking beer or not. Now that’s funny.
Is it or isn’t it?