The Beers War1

Atlas Brewery Company discovered that distributors of San Manuel Brewery in

Metro Manila had in their warehouses hundreds of cases of empty beer bottles owned by
Atlas Brewery. The distributors of San Manuel Beer apparently bought the empty bottles
from retailers to reduce the volume of sales of Atlas Beer in their areas. The San Manuel
Beer distributors claimed, on the other hand, that they merely retailed against Atlas Beer
distributors who had been buying and destroying the empty bottles of San Manuel beer in
their areas.

A law student, Fred Sanchez, complained that when he drank beer with friends one
evening in June at a restaurant near his school, he found a cockroach in the bottle of San
Manuel Beer that he drank from. He vomited upon such discovery and suffered anxiety
over fear that he would get sick. He got angry with the restaurant owner for serving the
beer and threw the bottle with the pest in it at him, causing injury on the owner’s head. The
restaurant owner blamed San Manuel Brewery for the incident and sued it. San Manuel
Brewery, on the other hand, blamed Atlas Brewery and its distributors for tampering with
its products.

Fred Sanchez and his friends created a lot of noise about the poisoned San Manuel
Beer products and initiated a boycott of those products. Their action found them friends
from among the Atlas Brewery distributors.

1
ROBERTO A. ABAD, FUNDAMENTALS OF LEGAL WRITING 15-16 (2009
ed.).