Contaminated Food: Who is Liable?

Have you ever eaten a food product, or perhaps gone to a restaurant, only to feel very, perhaps violently ill, shortly afterwards? You may have been a victim of food poisoning.

How Does Food Poisoning Happen?

There are a number of ways that you can end up eating contaminated food. This often happens when food is out of your control—for example you buy it at a grocery store or a restaurant, and have no idea about its handling or the sanitation surrounding the food.

Making food poisoning cases even more complex, is that the food itself can be contaminated, and make you ill. This would happen when food is stored at an incorrect temperature, or where the food is simply too old to be safely eaten.

What is Actually Contaminated?

But food products can be complex, with other food products in them—imagine a dip made with sour cream, mayonnaise, or other ingredients, any one of which may have been old, spoiled, or cross contaminated. Even water—an ingredient in almost every food product, or sauce—can be contaminated, making us sick or ill.

Negligence or Products Liability?

That’s why food product cases can have dual liability. On the one hand, there can be negligence cases involving the improper storage or handling of food. But there can also be product liability cases, where a manufacturer may be liable for selling or making food that has been contaminated in the warehouse or wherever the food product is made.

Many national recalls where food is taken off grocery stores, relate to products liability stemming from problems at the food processing or manufacturing levels.

Sometimes, only your own food is contaminated. These are usually negligence cases, where, say, a restaurant sold a small number of people a food product that made those people ill. Where there are manufacture-level, large scale, products liability cases, it is often thousands of people who fall ill.

Difficulties and Defenses

One difficulty in food poisoning cases, is that victims often don’t know they’re victims, until hours after they eat. They may even, at first, just think they aren’t feeling well, before realizing the nature and extent of the illness.

By that time, the food product is gone, and potentially unable to be tested. Of course, Defendants will also say it isn’t food poisoning, but rather, that you have some illness or virus, unrelated to food.

With foods that you take home, such as from a grocery store, Defendants will often say that you stored or prepared the food improperly (a good reason to always abide by the storage directions on food labeling).

Defendants also may see illness as a quick inconvenience that you just get over, and recover from. Defendants want to undermine the pain, discomfort and illness that you experienced because of the food poisoning.

Sickened by contaminated food, at home or in a restaurant? Get help today. Call us for help and to schedule a consultation with the Tampa personal injury lawyers at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian today for help.

Source:

independent.co.uk/news/health/vibrio-vulnificus-bacteria-california-amputation-b2414250.html