Chinese customer wins expired goods court case

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After getting a mere 20 Chinese cents (0.03 U.S. dollars) for tipping authorities off about a supermarket selling expired bread, a Chinese customer took the local government to court and won himself a much bigger reward.

Last March, a man surnamed Jia from China's eastern Jinan City bought the bread from a local supermarket and sought redress from the district's food and drug administration department, the Paper reported.

The food and drug authority decided in his favor, ordering the shop to pay a 50,000 yuan fine and reimburse 2.02 yuan worth of bread money. Jia, however, discovered that he would only get paid 20 cents, less than one-tenth of his loss.

Feeling unsatisfied, he decided to take the administrator to the district court.

There he met a setback as the court ruled the reward was valid. It quoted a municipal-level reward plan, which offers informants a bounty worthy 10 percent of the product in question if they succeeded in reporting food- and drug-related discrepancies.

Jia appealed the case quoting a national-level reward plan rolled out in 2017 by the country's food and drug administration aimed at improving China's food and drug safety.

The reward mechanism, which overrides the municipal plan, predicates that the informants should be rewarded at least 2,000 yuan (290 U.S. dollars) for reporting misconduct.

After the intermediate court in Jinan reviewed the case, it announced the final verdict on Wednesday, ruling that Jia was underpaid and ordering the district food and drug administration department to pay the customer at least 2,000 yuan based on the national-level reward plan.