Two women were hospitalized after suffering from E. coli infections that were allegedly caused by lettuce at a Wendy's fast food chain. Lawsuits were filed against Wendy's International in Salt Lake City federal court, seeking damages in an unspecified amount.
E. coli, Escherichia coli, is a bacteria found in the human digestive tract that is normally harmless; however, some strains are linked to food poisoning and are serious, causing fatal blood poisoning and other deadly illnesses. In the United States, E. coli is the leading cause of foodborne illness.
When a consumer is affected by food poisoning and seeks to hold accountable a restaurant operator for injuries, such as the case above, the consumer is required to prove that the food contained a deleterious substance, which, when consumed, caused the illness; recovery will generally be denied in the absence of such proof.
So, the basis of a legal action for proof of food poisoning encompasses two major issues, the identity of the organism that caused the plaintiff's illness and the establishment of a causal connection between the defendant's food and the plaintiff's illness.
However, when dealing with food it is often difficult or even impossible to prove both that a person suffered from food poisoning, and that the poisoning came from a particular source. There are few clear-cut distinctions between food borne illnesses and other disease processes. So, to establish a claim, there must be evidence that a particular food, or at least some item among a reasonably small group of foods, was unwholesome. A mere showing that a person became sick subsequent to eating food is insufficient.
Therefore, to prove food poisoning with some degree of certainty, one would need to identify the specific organism in the patient and in a particular food or location. More frequently, there is some degree of doubt in cases, because extensive lab work is not always done to identify the exact cause of the patient's illness, or because the source of the organism is not identified. For example, several persons may become ill from the same organism, apparently contracted from one restaurant, yet that organism may not be found when the kitchen and its personnel are examined. In such instances, courts may allow some speculative evidence that is reasonably related to help prove the organism or source.
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