A man has taken his ex-girlfriend to court because he suffered hearing damage after a big kiss. The man has been left with tinnitus and believes that the ex-girlfriend is responsible for this. The relationship is now over. “I heard a smack in my ear. It was awful.”
The couple had been to a pop concert in early October together with the woman’s 11-year-old son. The next morning they woke up in a hotel. The man gave his then girlfriend a few kisses on her neck and on her ear. The latter, according to the woman, landed in the middle of her left ear. The woman would have said immediately that she did not like this, to which the man would have responded with ‘don’t be like that’.
The woman did not feel taken seriously and decided to show the man how annoying it can be by giving the same kiss back on his ear. “The kiss was not meant to hurt him anyway,” the woman said during the session in The Hague court. ,,But to see if he also thought it was an annoying feeling, because he did not acknowledge that he had hurt me, he trivialized my reaction to it and did not take me seriously.
And the man soon noticed that it was not a pleasant experience. He suffered hearing damage from the kiss, including tinnitus, it can be read in the pronunciation. The relationship also came under considerable pressure and two weeks after the kissing incident, the couple put an end to it.
plastic surgeon
Not long after, the man, who works as a plastic surgeon, held his ex-girlfriend liable for the hearing damage. He says he can no longer do his job fully and is now 40 percent incapacitated for work.
Only if the woman gave the kiss knowing that there was a good chance that her boyfriend would suffer damage as a result, did she act unlawfully
Right
“She gave me a hard kiss right in the ear canal of my left ear,” the man previously stated. “It really went full steam ahead. I heard a smack in my ear. It was awful. I had no pain, but I immediately heard a whizzing sound. I heard everything very dull.”
The case ultimately had to be fought in the court of The Hague. The man’s request to hold his ex-girlfriend liable for the injury has been rejected. ‘Only if the woman gave the kiss while she knew (or should have known) that there was a good chance that her boyfriend would suffer damage as a result, she acted unlawfully. That is not the case here,” the judge said.
Can you get tinnitus from a kiss on your ear?
The chance that a kiss on one ear can actually cause tinnitus is ‘very small’, says Henri Marres, chairman of the ENT association. He cannot say anything substantive about the case, but does indicate that a kiss on an ear can cause a noise trauma. And that can lead to tinnitus. “This is possible due to the intensity and duration of the sound. Then the damage is usually temporary.”
In addition, high pressure or ‘overpressure’ via the eardrum can also cause noise damage, which is caused by sound of high intensity or of long duration, such as a bang during fireworks. In that case, tinnitus may last longer.
In any case, the chairman of the ENT association has never heard before that tinnitus is contracted directly from a kiss.
