This was an interesting interview. A national food poisoning lawyer, who has recently filed numerous WanaBana lead contamination lawsuits, salmonella contaminated cantaloupe lawsuits, a deadly Dave’s Sushi morrell mushroom lawsuit, and the recent Charcuterie Meat Salmonella lawsuit, sat down with FoodPoisoningNews.com to answer questions.
What is a food poisoning lawsuit?
If you are driving down the road, and get hit by another car that failed to stay in its lane, you traditionally do not just shrug your shoulders and move on. You expect the other driver to anti-up and pay to have the damage to your car repaired – either directly from the driver or from his insurance carrier. Auto drivers, in most states, are in fact required to have insurance. The same is true for food poisoning. Food is supposed to be safe, even if its not healthy. Think Twinkies. They are not likely to win you any health awards, but I’ve never known one to make you sick! If you consume food, and it makes you sick, the person or establishment who mishandled the food is likely liable. Even if they sold you food that they made correctly, but it contained a bad ingredient, they are likley directly liable to the consumer even if they can then go after the maker of the ingredient and get reimbursed.
Who can bring a food poisoning lawsuit?
Anyone who gets sick from consumption of bad food can bring a lawsuit – whether it will be successful depends on a few things, but in this way food poisoning is like any other personal injury claim. Mos successful cases are those who got ill and were then contacted by their local health agency. Most of the common pathogens, such as E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Campylobacter, Norovirus, Cyclospora, botulism, or hepatitis A, are reportable diseases. Physicians and laboratories are required by law to report positive findings to the local health department. These local health departments follow-up and begin an investigation. These investigations are often on of the most valuable tools in a food borne illness lawsuit. What to take form that? Get tested!
What proof is needed in a food poisoning lawsuit?
To SUCESSFULLY bring a claim, a few things need to be in order. There most important is the need to prove WHICH food made you sick. And no, its not as obvious as the last thing you ate! The difficulty can be in determining, with sufficient evidence, what the thing that made you ill. If you get Hepatitis A it is something you at between two weeks and 50 day ago! If you consume a parasite, you may not get ill for weeks! Consuming salmonella or e. coli can make you ill in as little as s couple of hours or it may take two to three days. Norovirus or staph can sicken you in hours. So how to tell? There are two common ways to identify the source of the food poisoning. One is through proper testing in which a stool or blood sample is cultured and the culture (or viral screen) matches the same bacteria or virus identified in the food product.
Another method is through the use of a trace-back investigation. In this situation, either (1) individuals sickened by the same pathogen are interviewed, extensively, about common food histories until one of the commonly consumed foods establishes itself as the statistically likley cause; or (2) many people, otherwise unrelated, get ill who all ate at one particular place – like the infamous Pasha Mediterranean Grill outbreak of 2018 or the Firefly Tapas Kitchen & Bar Salmonella outbreak of 2013,
What are the damages in a food poisoning lawsuit?
Most people will have an injury, just like a car accident or any other personal injury. Many will have medical bills and may have lost wages from lost time at work. In some cases, the illnesses can be quite severe and very costly, such as e. coli induced hemolytic uremic syndrome, these can be very extensive! But there are also the long-term impacts that effect some people, and which can lead to very significant long-term future medical expenses. Some of these include post infectious Irritable Bowl Syndrome (PI-IBS), post infectious reactive arthritis (PI-RA), or Guillain-Barre Syndrome. An experience food poisoning lawyer will need to evaluate your claim thoroughly to get a better understanding of your injuries.
After the interview, i felt I had learned about something that, according to Tony Coveny, is one of the oldest causes of action (legal principles) in U.S. history!
