The State - News from Aug. 24, 1988

A false claim that Frank Sinatra tried to turn the calendar back with a “youth serum” will cost a Swiss clinic $450,000, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has decided. The court upheld a federal judge’s damage award against the Clinic La Prairie in Montreux, Switzerland, for misappropriating Sinatra’s name. The court said the clinic was trying to solicit business in California when it planted a phony story in the National Enquirer in 1984, knowing that Sinatra lived in the state and the tabloid circulated widely there. The article said Sinatra had been treated with a “youth serum” of sheep cells. In fact, Sinatra had never visited the clinic or received any treatment, the court said.