7 Year Old Boy Removed from Father and Placed in State Custody Over mistaken Order of Hard Lemonade

By Phil Leggiereon April 29, 2008 5:04 PM |

U of Michigan professor unfamiliar with Mike's Hard Lemonade orders his son a lemonade at baseball game. After boy is discovered by a security guard sipping the bottle police and child protective services remove boy to foster home.

Detroit Free-Press reports:

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.
And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.

Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" -- or even the History Channel, for that matter.
The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

"I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."

But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.

"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.
"You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.

Mistake or child neglect?

An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.

Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the boy admitted he was feeling a little nauseated.

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.

"Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home."

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

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it's automatic.

I remember this, back in Germany.

There was a bathroom cleaner, such as Ajax, displaying a cut open lemon on the can.
Now that was back in the 60's when all the those guest workers from Turkey and elsewhere were ushered in.

What happened is, some of them thought it was a beverage powder to be poured into water and ... yeah drink it!

No chit! They had to change their package label and visual advertisemnt came under scrutiny, where after they installed a law about "misguiding advertisement".

Btw, I probably had more beer poured down my throut at age 7, than that boy had "Mike's Hard Lemonade" and nobody even noticed it.

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I'll admit to not being at a ballpark lately, but I thought concessions stopped serving beverages in bottles under most municipal ordinances to prevent player injury from errant fans tossing glass projectiles onto the field?

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They sell beer in plastic bottles now at baseball games.

Its a sad deal, because the cop doesn't have any leeway to make an exception. On the other hand, I bet that Cider cost $8 for the bottle, and I am surprised dad didn't notice. I dealt with a situation kind of similar a long time ago, and one other thing I am surprised about, is that DHS or whomever took custody didn't place the child with a relative or trusted friend rather than foster parents, who in my experience already have too many kids of their own and just want the payment that comes with boarding a ward of the State.

Didn't notice or didn't care. Either one leads to the same thing. Either he didn't care and fed the kid alcohol or he didn't notice what he was giving the kid. I can't get away with "Your Honor. I didn't notice the speed limit sign.".

Still, is it legal for a parent to give their kid alcohol? I heard in some places it was legal as long as it is a parent or legal guardian.

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Yes in Mississippi as long as a legal parent is present AND the establishment agrees with the exception in the MABC laws.

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Leo didn't feel a thing. I watch a boat load of t.v. and have never ever heard of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

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Never have seen an ad for it. Only way i know about it is that Daughter likes it. (She's 23)

Neither have I. I'm not a TV junkie by any sense, but I see enough TV to recognize a product on the shelf that had a TV ad.

I've seen very few malted drink/wine cooler ads on TV lately. Zima was predominant at one time and Smirnoff may had a short-lived ad too.

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While reading an article about this story I came across this one:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/07/18/photos/index2.html

It's upsetting to think that your children could be whisked away from you based on a stranger's interpretation of things.

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All of the ones I've been to do sell them in plastic bottles but the hawkers or concessionaires take the tops off of them to cut down on the projectile factor. The non-hooligans carry an extra plastic cap to put on the open one while consuming the first one to keep it from spilling.

I guess I'm surprised so many haven't heard of Mike's Hard. Sure seems like a hyper-sensitive reaction to me, though.

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Talk about an over reaction.


I had my first beer at 8, didn't affect me! (takes a sip of rum)

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Definate overreaction. A more appropriate one would have been to inform the not-so-up-to-date father of what he was giving his son, and let him take it from there.

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Aren't you supposed to card people when they buy alcohol anyway?

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