Walking past a run-down house-turned-gym by my house that I noticed today for the very first time, I saw their 50’s style font proclaiming World Famous Since 1948. Made me wonder about that. Do they bear any legal responsibility to back up that claim? I highly doubt that they have indeed been famous throughout the world for lo these past almost 60 years.
What does that even mean, anyway? How would you go about verifying that? Do you only need one guy from another country?
What about other signage like that? “Famous since…” or “World’s #1…” or even “New York’s best since…”
Also, do quotes matter? If the signage was in quotes (it wasn’t) does that somehow absolve them?
The responsibility isn’t for them to prove it is true. It is for someone else to challenge it and assert some kind of damages which no one could ever do of course. There is someone from abroad that has known the place since way back when or perhaps on American who moved abroad that used to hang out there. It is certainly plausible so you prove that there isn’t some guys in Russia that have a wild story to tell about the place. All claims of that nature are like that.
If you opened your business in 1981 but put on a big sign saying “Bob’s Diner, famous since 1954” who could make you take the sign down and why?
What would the claim by the plaintiff be, “I would have only eaten there if they were really around since the 50’s. I was mislead to believe they’ve been there since 1954. Now knowing they opened in 1981 has brought me irreconcilable grief.”
You’ll often see the word “leading” in a claim, like “America’s Leading Phone Company” which, depending on context, is an essentially meaningless term.
I think companies only need to back up claims of superiority/public preference to another specific brand. For example, when Pepsi claimed that the public preferred their taste to that of Coke, they had to back that up with the taste-tests. I have run a lot of market research projects specifically designed to be able to back up these kinds of claims. They are actually called “legal studies” in the industry, and everything has to be extremely well-documented, in case it is needed as evidence in legal proceedings down the road…and these types of results DO get challenged in court fairly regularly, from what I understand.
Pizza Hut sued Papa John’s for false advertising for claiming that its pizzas were "better.‘’ A jury initially sided with Pizza Hut but an appeals court overturned the verdict.
If Papa John’s has simply said, “The best pizza in the universe,” nobody could have sued, since this claim would be dismissed as standard puffery. Instead, their slogan was “Better ingredients, better pizza.”
When you say “better” rather than “best,” you seem to be making a quantifiable claim of superiority to your competitiors, and that opens you to a lawsuit. Piza Hut could ask, reasonably, “What do you mean ‘better ingredients’- you use flour, water, tomatoes and cheese from the same suppliers we use! How can there be ‘better ingredients’?”