In its ruling of 2 December 2015 the German Federal Court held that the labelling of the fruit tea in question is misleading by giving the impression that particular ingredients (rasperries and vanilla) are present, even though they are not in fact present. The German Federal Court herewith confirmed the ruling of the European Court of Justice (Case C-195/14).
The package displayed images of raspberries and vanilla flowers and the tea was promised to contain "only natural ingredients" and "natural flavorings – raspberry-vanilla taste", but the tea did not actually contain any ingredients obtained from raspberries or vanilla, and the latter was apparent only from the list of ingredients.
The European Court of Justice held that even though consumers who are interested in the exact composition of a product will read the list of ingredients, the existence of such a list may not be sufficient to correct the erroneous or misleading impression if some of the items on the packaging are misleading, erroneous, ambiguous, contradictory or incomprehensible.
