Why the F is Chi Chi's being sued.....

[Noordam]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hepatitis-Outbreak.html

I understand a lot of people got Hepatitis from eating green onions at Chi Chi's and in other restaurants in Ga and NC. BUT what did the restaurant do WRONG. The Hepatitis was picked up in the GROWING of the onions in Mexico.

Sometimes lawyers just go too far............

[northernsoul]

1. so the restaurant has no obligation not to poison their guests?

When you invite the public onto your premises and you sell them food for your own profit, there is an implied warrantly that your goods will not be harmful and you have an obligation not to poison them. Pretty simple concept.

[corarose]

3. We have had a talk about this at Culinary College

If the onions were in a premade item that Chi Chi's just heats up then they would have had no idea that the food was bad.

[northernsoul]

5. then they need to join their supplier as a co-defendant

bottom line is that when you sell someone food you are warranting that it won't poison them. It may well be that a supplier sold them bad produce in a manner that prevented their being able to inspect the goods, in which case the supplier should be on the hook for the damages. But to get to the bottom of what happened, the people who were poisoned have to start by suing Chi-Chi's.

[corarose]

13. They are responsible for their customers and ChiChi's needs to sue

The supplier.

[MinnFats]

9. generally speaking, food-sellers are obliged..

....
to sell products to consumers that does not kill them.

Chi-Chi's is obligated to purchase safe food for its customers.

people died from this.

Northern Soul is correct on this one.

Remember when a couple of kids died from eating Jack in the Box burgers in the northwest a few years back? Jack in the Box didn't produce the beef, either, but they paid big settlements to the families of the victims.

If somebody from your family died from hepatitis caught from Chi-Chi's scallions, you might have a different view.

[Marlie]

2. This is so stupid

We had a wonderful caterer in our small town, had been in business
for years. They sold a batch of bad potatoe salad and lost their
business. The cause was celery grown in Porta Rico... We have
the best farm land in the world, yet we purchase produce from God
knows where and under what conditions? They say veggies are so good
for us - I won't eat raw vegetable anymore, cook them thoroughly
but there goes most of the vitamin content.

[northernsoul]

8. you can thank big agribusiness for that

less and less local family farms growing top quality produce and anchoring America's rural economy and more and more corporate mega-farms thousand of miles away staffed by people who barely get a pot to piss in for their efforts.

[Muddleoftheroad]

18. Or you can thank lawyers

Small businesses have a hard time protecting themselves from litigation and this story shows it.

[sangh0]

21. Chi-Chi's is NOT a "small business"

and small businesses get liability insurance, which is not expensive. That is the Republican's argument, and it is based on lies.

[northernsoul]

23. well, we tried living without product liability in the 1890's

People were poisoned, maimed, burned, etc. left and right and they had little to no recourse.

That's not a period of time I'm eager to return to, myself.

Nowadays we have this wacky rule that if you sell something to somebody, you are warranting that normal use of this product will not kill the person who bought it. If your small business is receiving faulty goods from a supplier that you cannot discover under reasonable inspection, then implead that supplier as a third-party defendant and if the facts bear out that they are fault, they will bear the liablity.
I'm all in favor of businesses succeeding, but that doesn't give them a blank check to not exercise basic care for their consumers.

Anyone feel like a taking a ride in Ford Pinto?

[Snow]

4. Cuz people and their lawyers figure they can make some big

bucks quickly and easily. Might even get some quick out-of-court settlements.

[northernsoul]

7. or maybe some people think that they shouldn't be poisoned

I know it sounds crazy, but when if a corporation sells me food I'd like to be able to think I'm not going to be poisoned by them.

I know everybody likes to beat up on lawyers and all, but this is a legitimate reason to sue.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

6. because people got

Hepatitis eating their food. Chi-Chi's can feel free to sue their supplier.

[Noordam]

10. Chi-Chi could not have stopped this from happening

What are we going to close down all SALID BARS and stop serving uncooked veggies.....

[sangh0]

16. Not true

All they have to do is buy American produce, which is subject to more stringent health regs than imported produce.

[On the Road]

11. Controlling Imported Produce is the Federal Government's Responsibility

if it can't be done safely, don't import it.

"Let the middleman beware" is just as ridiculous a regulatory attitude as "let the buyer beware". The lawyers just picked the easiest target. To really address the problem, go after the source in Mexico, go after the US regulatory agencies, and go after the laws and treaties that allowed this to happen.

Chi-Chi's has a responsibility to take reasonable precautions that their ingredients are safe. Nothing in the story suggests to me that they failed this obligation.

[DBoon]

15. You have a point

We refuse to regulate commerce in the public good, so instead we end up twisting the tort system to make amends when the inevitable bad things happen.

Better regulation would mean fewer law suits, and a lesser temptation for people who are wronged to seek redress through the tort system.

[sangh0]

17. Not true

"We" don't refuse to regulate the importation of produce. Agri-business and the food industry refuse to be regulated, and contribute a great deal in bribes to politicians to make it isn't regulated.

[northernsoul]

25. the facts will need to be borne out in court

We won't know what really happened until this reaches discovery phase, which is why this has to be litigated.

[LuminousX]

12. Think of this another way

You are driving your car when someone slams into you.

Who does your insurance company sue or go after? The driver of the other car, correct?

What if the other car had just had a brake job and the mechanic screwed it up and the brakes failed, preventing the car from stopping before hitting you? It wouldn't matter. The insurance company would go after the driver. It is the driver's responsibility to keep his car in working order. Now that driver can turn around and sue the mechanic (which is what HIS insurance company will do).

Chi-Chi's gets sued because it is the point-of-contact for the people who got sick. Chi-Chi's insurance company either coughs up the money and drops it or turns around and sues the distributor who gave them the bad onions. This goes on until there isn't anyone left to sue in the chain of culpability.

[DBoon]

14. I love NAFTA

Toxic produce. Yummmm.

[stevedeshazer]

28. Exactly right

They should sue all the politicians who took money from agribusiness interests and made the importation of food like this possible.

Mexico uses sludge from human waste as fertilizer on fields. Now some in the US ar starting to do the same.

Get your produce locally, while you still can.

[Heddi]

19. As an Ex-Culinarian

who took 2 semesters of Food Law (or whatever they called it), I concur with the other posters.

Chichi's has an obligation to NOT poision their patrons.

Be it that an employee didn't wash their hands after handling raw chicken and infects customers with salmonella, or that the restaurant buys produce or products that are infected with e.coli or hepatitis, or botulism.

The fact remains that Chi-Chi's was the one who infected these people.

All food should be treated like it's contaminated. That's why many restaurants won't serve hamburger rare or medium rare, or at an internal temperature less than 165F. Should a customer get e.Coli, the RESTAURANT will be liable for that sickness, even if the bacterium was present in the product before it reached the restaurant via purveyors.

Many restaurants won't serve raw or partially cooked seafood for the same reason.

May restaurants won't serve ground-grown bean-and-alfalfa sprouts because of the inherent danger of transmitting e.Coli to a patient since the e.Coli is present in the soil that the sprouts grow in. This can be avoided by careful washing, but you can never be TOO sure, adn that's why many restaurants, if they serve sprouts at all, only serve those grown hydroponicly, or grown in air/water and without the use of soil and animal-product fertilizers.

The Hepatitis A on the onions, just like e.Coli on sprouts, could have been removed by forceful washing of the onions (either by the restaurant, if they were purchashed fresh or whole, or by the company who processed the onions).

However, working in food-service for many years, I've seen the way things are done in kitchens, and the washing procedures more often than not consist of dunking said fruit/vegetable into a bucket of water, shaking it off, and serving it to customers.

Yes, the restaurant should be held responsible, for they were the ones who served the infected product to the customer. The food purveyor should be held responsible, because they were the ones who sold the infected food to the restaurant, and the farm should be held responsible, because they were the ones who sold the infected food to the purveyor

[TreasonousBastard]

20. According to yesterday's NYT....

the Hep A virus can't be washed off. It clings to the microfibers on the produce. The Times also mentioned that while the number of incidents of poisoning from produce doubled over the last five years or so, and is approaching that from meat, it's still in the low thousands and a very tiny percentage of the billions of meals eaten each year. Much of it is also from bad prep at home, such as cutting lettuce on a board you just cut up a chicken on.

Further mentioned is that people want fresh produce all year long, and that means importing from southern countries, many of which have lousy health standards. Even in the US, we have no law insisting on, say, using potable water on vegetables on the farm.

Be that as it may, you're right that our tort system basically says sue the point of contact, and let them worry about subrogation or collection from someone else, if possible. That's why everyone buys liability insurance.

It is, to some extent, unfair that the restaurant may pick up the whole tab if the supplier can't be touched for some reason, but life isn't fair. Any lawyer will tell you how they go after the "deep pockets." It wasn't exactly decided by anyone in particular, but developed over the years that the tort system picked up a lot of societal obligations for injury that wasn't covered elsewhere. It can be argued that it also isn't fair for people to get sick from bad food and have no recourse at all.

[MojoKrunch]

24. Couldn't they test the veggies before importing?

Mojo

[sangh0]

27. Yes

Nothing stops a business from testing the food they buy except their desire to pocket the money

[Noordam]

22. While you paint a good picture of diseases that a

restaurant can stop. If as the New York Times said "the Hep A virus can't be washed off" then what is a restaurant to do. Stop serving "fresh" veggies.

My point is the producer needs to be held responsible...

[sangh0]

26. What's a restaurant to do?

How about making sure it only purchases produce from vendors who will garauntee that the growers use clean water for their produce?

How about having an in-house lab to do random spot-checks?

How about NOT spending money on lobbyists and politicians who fight any and all government regulations?

How about buying American produce which is grown under our health codes, instead of imported produce which is not.

[adriennel]

29. ChiChis is bad

I don't think the lawsuits will get very far because ChiChis filed Chapter 11 last month.

I absolutely love Mexico and lived there for many years. Still, whenever Mexican produce is involved, extra precautions do need to be taken. My father contracted hepatits while there, the cause believed to be raw oysters.

I think this is a pretty clear case of thrift trumping safety.

Now, this is my personal opinion, not intended to offend:
All Chi Chis should be closed because (a) their food really sucks and (b) is not remotely close to mexican food.

[tableturner]

30. I used to own a supermarket

I got sued because a customer got a bad can of something. It was not our fault at all. The end user who is damaged has to sue the end supplier (me in the case I am mentioning and Chi Chi's in the case at hand). We simply turned it over to the producer and they handled it. Suing the party you buy the damaged product from is a technicality and if you simply handled it with no wrong doing on your part, the liability goes up the chain. Chi Chi's did nothing wrong and could not have done anything to prevent the problem except for not using green onions, which is a staple for many Mexican foods. Sometimes you can only get green onions from Mexico. There is no guarantee even if the product is domestic. They did NOTHING wrong and if you are reasonable you will understand. The aggrieved party is not left holding the bag and will collect from the correct source at fault.