THE Court of Appeals (CA) has affirmed the decision of the Department of Justice (DOJ) dismissing the complaint a woman filed against Juan Brewing Inc., maker of “Cosmic Carabao” gin.
The complainant alleged that she suffered methanol poisoning after she consumed the Cosmic Carabao gin at a bachelorette party.
In a ruling dated March 28, 2025, the appellate court’s Sixteenth Division, through Associate Justice Ronaldo Roberto Martin, said the decision by the Quezon City prosecutors’ office junking the complaint for insufficient evidence was not baseless or biased.
The DOJ later upheld the prosecutor’s resolution, prompting the complainant to elevate the case to the CA.
Records of the case showed that the woman claimed she and her sister consumed three bottles of Cosmic Carabao gin at the bachelorette party.
She said that when she woke up the next day, she kept passing out and was brought to a hospital where doctors diagnosed her with methanol poisoning.
The complainant claimed that due to methanol poisoning, she suffered a brain hemorrhage, which caused her to lose peripheral vision in her left eye.
She also claimed that her friend, who also drank the same gin, died from methanol poisoning.
But the Quezon City prosecutor’s office and the DOJ held that the cause of her injuries was not clear based on her medical records.
They also cited the complainant’s admission about taking an illegal drug and drinking other alcoholic beverages, which they added, may have also contained methanol.
The prosecutor and the DOJ said this created a strong doubt that the methanol in her body was due to her imbibing the Cosmic Carabao gin.
The complainant, in appealing the case to the CA, stressed that Cosmic Carabao gin was the proximate cause of her methanol poisoning, citing the results of laboratory tests the Food and Drug Administration conducted, which found that Cosmic Carabao gin had lethal levels of methanol.
She also said her admission that she took an illegal drug and imbibed other beverages was made while she was intoxicated and had no coherent understanding of the questions being asked of her.
She said her admissions were later overruled by her subsequent diagnoses.
But the CA junked her appeal, saying the prosecutor and the DOJ did not commit grave abuse of discretion when they dismissed the complaint.
“In fact, in arriving at his conclusion, the prosecutor carefully, exhaustively, and deliberately scrutinized all the documentary evidence attached by the petitioner to her complaint-affidavit,” the CA ruling held.
The appellate court also stressed that its power to review is limited to whether there is a grave abuse of discretion committed in a case.
“In this case, there was none,” it said.
