Williamsburg resident Barbara Schmidt spent six days in intensive care and has spent weeks recovering from Listeria, just one of the hospitalizations linked to Boar’s Head deli meats.
The Marler Clark Law Firm, based in Seattle, Wash., has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Schmidt in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking $10 million in punitive damages from Boar’s Head.
More lawsuits will be filed in the coming week, the law firm said.
This is the second lawsuit filed to date in the Boar’s Head Listeria outbreak. The family of Günter “Garshon” Morgenstein, 88, of Newport News, who died on July 18, recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
Schmidt was a regular consumer of liverwurst and purchased the tainted meat product at a Harris Teeter in Williamsburg on July 12, according to the suit.
In addition to Harris Teeter, more than 300 locations in Virginia sold the tainted meat paste including Kroger, Giant, Martins, Publix, Target and Total Wine stores.
Schmidt got sick a day later with vomiting, fever, fatigue, headache, chills and confusion, according to the lawsuit. She was seen in the emergency room and was admitted for three days. She returned to the hospital one day after being released because her condition had worsened, and her fever spiked to 104 degrees. She was hospitalized for an additional nine days and underwent “invasive procedures that were necessary to save her life.”
She was released to rehabilitation on July 29 and was discharged to return home on Aug. 8. She continues to recover with antibiotic infusions to combat the Listeria infection, the lawsuit states.
“Mrs. Schmidt could have very well been one of the victims who died,” Bill Marler, a food safety attorney representing Schmidt, told AFP. “She is recovering, but it is going to be a long road to recovery.”
To date, there have been nine deaths and 57 hospitalizations in 18 states including Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.
Recently released inspection reports show a history of unsafe conditions at the Jarratt plant linked to the Listeria strain.
“The years of inspection reports little doubt that the Boar’s Head plant’s food safety plan must have been non-existent,” said Marler, in a post on the law firm’s website. “It is hard to wrap your head around how food could be produced in these conditions by this company and under the gaze of FSIS inspectors.”
Federal inspectors found mold and mildew, green algal growth, condensation leaks, puddles of blood, flies, gnats, cockroaches and heavy meat buildup in the Jarratt plant, according to the inspection reports.
The 2022 reports from the Jarratt plant “just underscore how the plant had ongoing and systemic food safety problems,” Marler said. “It is amazing that a plant that is producing ready-to-eat product was operating in this manner and that the inspectors let it go on and on.”
More victims are possible in the outbreak. The last update from the CDC was two weeks ago, on Aug. 28.
The tainted products had sell-by dates extending through October. More than 7 million pounds of meat were recalled from the Jarratt plant.
“I hope the illnesses and deaths stop but given the incubation period of three to 70 days, we may not have seen the end of this yet,” Marler said.
The future of the Jarratt plant
The Boar’s Head Provisions company should be able to withstand the fallout and financial repercussions resulting from the outbreak. The Florida-based company’s worth is estimated between $1 billion and $1.2 billion, according to multiple reports.
The processing plant in Jarratt has temporarily shut down and is being sanitized, according to Boar’s Head management, but the future of the plant has not been announced.
“Most companies do survive, but they need to get ahead of this by being transparent, admitting their fault, doing what they can to help the victims and become a leader in food safety – that is what Jack in the Box did in 1993,” Marler told AFP.
More than 30 years ago, the Jack in the Box restaurant chain faced an E.coli outbreak due to tainted beef patties. The outbreak killed four children and infected 732 people in California, Idaho, Washington and Nevada, and left hundreds with permanent injuries including kidney and brain damage. The chain recovered, and their food safety standards are more stringent today than anyone else in the industry.
“If they [Boar’s Head] can rid the [Jarratt] plant of Listeria – which is a huge undertaking – they might be able to reopen,” Marler said.
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Crystal Graham
