Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc.
Case Date: 11/04/1984
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Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U.S. 485 (1984), was a product disparagement case ultimately decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court found, on a 6-3 vote, in favor of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, ruling that proof of "actual malice" was necessary in product disparagement cases raising First Amendment issues, as set out by the case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. The Court ruled that the First Circuit Court of Appeals had correctly concluded that Bose had not presented proof of actual malice.
The magazine Consumer Reports had published in 1970 a review of an unusual loudspeaker system manufactured by Bose Corporation, called the Bose 901. The review expressed skepticism of the system's quality and recommended that consumers delay purchase until they had investigated for themselves whether the loudspeaker system's unusual attributes would suit them. Bose objected to numerous statements in the article, including the sentences, "Worse, individual instruments heard through the Bose system seemed to grow to gigantic proportions and tended to wander about the room. For instance, a violin appeared to be 10 feet (3.0 m) wide and a piano stretched from wall to wall." Bose demanded a retraction when they learned that Consumer Reports changed what the original reviewer wrote about the speakers in his pre-publication draft, which the magazine refused to do.
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