Several lawsuits have been filed days after federal authorities linked shredded lettuce served at Taco Bell to the ongoing cyclosporiasis outbreak.
Taco Bell is facing at least three lawsuits, at least one franchisee is being sued in a separate complaint and Taylor Farms is facing at least four cases, court records and plaintiff press releases indicate.
As of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported upwards of 4,100 laboratory confirmed cases of parasitic diarrheal illness caused by Cyclospora, and 7,400 cases require additional investigation.
The public health authority is “investigating multiple clusters of Cyclospora cases, including one multistate outbreak affecting 5 states linked to iceberg lettuce,” meaning it is possible there are outbreaks of the parasitic illness that are not causally linked to Taco Bell.
Suits allege negligence, deceptive marketing, injury
The suits, filed starting on July 17, seek a variety of remedies for the alleged illnesses. Null v. Taylor Farms, Taco Bell, is a class action “economic-loss case, not a personal-injury case” filed in California that seeks compensation for money consumers spent on Taco Bell items that could have sickened them.
Granados v. Taylor Farms, also filed in California, alleges plaintiffs “purchased Defendant’s Products during the applicable period from Sweetgreen, Costco and other places,” and seeks damages related to the purchase of the lettuce.
Sweetgreen CEO Jonathatn Neman said none of the chain’s products had been linked to the outbreak in a Wednesday LinkedIn post.
The two California suits claim that Taco Bell and Taylor Farms were negligent and sold products that had no worth, violating laws on marketing and business practices.
“[Taylor Farms] marketed and advertised the Products as being fit for human consumption,” the Granados complaint states. “In reality, Defendant’s advertising and marketing is deceptive, false, and misleading because the Products were or could have been contaminated with Cyclosporiasis [sic], and, thus, were not as advertised, represented, or guaranteed.”
Three of the cases — one against Taco Bell, one against the chain and Taylor Farms, and one against Taco Bell franchisee Pacific Bells and unspecified suppliers — hinge on product liability and alleged breaches of warranty. The plaintiffs maintain they were sickened by eating Taco Bell products and seek damages for ill effects suffered as a result of cyclosporiasis, including missed work and pain and suffering.
In one of the liability cases, Parrish v. Taco Bell, the plaintiffs allege that food served by the restaurant caused illness and injury and was “defective and unreasonably dangerous for its ordinary and expected use because it contained Cyclospora, a potentially deadly pathogen.”
Contamination likely happened before lettuce arrived at Taco Bells
Amira Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University’s College of Public Health, who previously worked for the CDC, said the parasite typically enters the supply chain when food items are exposed to water contaminated with Cyclospora-bearing human feces in irrigation or processing.
William Marler, partner at food safety law firm Marler Clark, said this probable contamination early in the product’s lifecycle meant Taylor Farms, in addition to Taco Bell, bore responsibility for consumers’ illnesses.
“By the time lettuce reaches a Taco Bell on Gratiot Avenue, whatever went wrong went wrong a long way upstream. That is why we sued the grower and the processor as well as the chain that served it,” Marler said in a press release.
However, the Parrish complaint said Taco Bell bore responsibility because the chain “designed, managed, and controlled the national and regional supply chain through which their restaurants, including the Durand Restaurant, were required to obtain produce and other ingredients, including the contaminated lettuce.”
Roess said the concentration of food production and processing in a handful of firms that each control a small number of large facilities meant that incidents of contamination were more likely to result in large-scale outbreaks.
“Our food production is so concentrated that if one of the products is contaminated, and it happens to be the product that a third of the country accesses, you have the reason for your national outbreak,” Roess said.
Neither Taco Bell nor Taylor Farms responded to requests for comment by press time. Both companies issued statements in the days following the Food and Drug Administration and CDC’s statements linking the outbreak to iceberg lettuce.
On July 17, Taco Bell said it had removed lettuce from an unspecified supplier linked to the outbreak. The brand said that move was made voluntarily.
Taylor Farms said on July 20 that it had “voluntarily recalled all iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico that was identified as the potential source of the Cyclospora outbreak,” and was investigating potential sources of the outbreak. The FDA said one Taylor Farms lettuce sample had resulted in a false-positive for Cyclospora contamination, but that the firm remained under investigation.
