A pregnant woman has filed a lawsuit after she claims she was hospitalized due to an illness brought on by Boar’s Head products following a recall of certain deli meats from the brand due to listeria.
The recall was issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Services after an investigation in Maryland by the Maryland Department of Health and the Baltimore City Health Department. Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control shows that at least 43 people have been affected by the outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes, a serious food infection contracted via food contamination. At least three people have died, according to the CDC.
Listeria can cause stillbirths and miscarriages in pregnant people. Other symptoms include fever, flu-like symptoms, a stiff neck, seizures, headaches, and or a loss of balance.
The woman is a Minnesota native and alleges she contracted the infection from deli meat at a Hollywood, Florida, Publix Supermarket while on vacation in late May. She was 35 weeks pregnant at the time. She began feeling ill when she returned home to Minnesota and was diagnosed with listeria, the same strain of the infection at the center of the recall. She was prescribed antibiotics and a six-day hospital stay, according to reporting from The Miami Herald. Thankfully, the woman did not experience a pregnancy loss and the child “appears happy and healthy,” her lawyers told reporters with the newspaper via email.
For a full list of products that were recalled, please visit FSIS.gov.
What is Product Liability?
Product liability is an area of law meant to protect consumers from defective products and the damages and injuries they can cause. Defendants that can be named in defective product lawsuits can include anyone from the manufacturer, wholesalers, retailers, and distributors. Anyone who has been injured as a result of a product’s defects may be eligible for compensation.
A plaintiff’s attorney’s argument for compensation in defective products cases can be based upon strict liability, negligence and or breach of warranty. Mostly these arguments will hinge on strict liability, meaning that the plaintiff’s attorney has to prove there is something wrong with the product their client used. These defects can include problems with how the product was made, design defects, instructions for use, failure to warn consumers about potential risks associated with use and or how the product was marketed to consumers.
Past Cases
Leesfield & Partners has built a reputation as one of the top product liability and defective products law firms in the country handling cases involving defective juvenile toys, motorcycle parts, furniture tip-over cases, and defective high chairs. The last of which brought about industry-wide changes following a child’s tragic strangulation death in his high chair. The firm represented the toddler’s family after his death and discovered that the manufacturer knew of over a dozen cases of other children who had been strangled by high chairs. Despite this knowledge, the manufacturer failed to warn parents of the potential dangers leaving them with the false security that their child would be safely and adequately restrained when left momentarily unattended in a high chair. Unfortunately for many devastated parents including our client, this was not the case. In that moment a child was found to easily slide against the tray and choke, a well-known safety risk within the child furniture manufacturing industry at the time.
A confidential settlement amount was secured at trial for the toddler’s grieving parents.
Due to the successful litigation of Leesfield & Partners’ Founder and Managing Partner, Ira Leesfield, industry-wide changes such as harnesses, straps, age requirements and tray sizes were implemented to prevent further tragedies.
Other cases involving children’s items include a 9-month-old baby who died from injuries sustained from an airbag after the child restraint safety device they were in showed the item installed in a car’s front seat. The mother placed the device in the front seat of the car, as it showed on the box, in a rear-facing position. The child died as a result. A confidential settlement was reached in that case.
In a $19.8 million lawsuit, Leesfield & Partners attorneys proved at trial that a defect with a motorcycle kickstand was to blame for a tragic crash that caused severe and permanent injuries to the firm’s 27-year-old client. The young man was riding on his Honda motorcycle when it spun out of control and crashed, leaving him a high-level quadriplegic.
Attorneys with the firm have also previously secured a $17.5 million settlement for a Central Florida family whose 2-year-old was killed in a case of tip-over furniture. Other cases handled by the firm include wrongful death cases for gun drop-fires, defective ATV and motorcycle cases, and medical devices.