The Anatomy of a Health Scare

One August day 10 years ago, cooks at the Minnesota Horse & Hunt Club in Prior Lake sprinkled parsley on some buttered potatoes. The following day, about 200 people who had eaten the spuds became violently ill.

When a state health department investigation concluded that the parsley had been contaminated with shigella bacteria, which causes infections that aren’t fatal but are extremely unpleasant, the people sued. And Michael Lindberg, an expert in civil tort lawsuits and president of Johnson & Lindberg in Minneapolis, was called to defend Horse & Hunt.

The state’s investigation had already illuminated the complicated trail of the contaminated parsley: A Mexican company, Grupo Pas, grew the parsley and washed it with what turned out to be bacteria-contaminated water. California-based Sunridge Farms packaged and branded the parsley and then sold it to Bix Fruit Company in St. Paul, which then sold it to the Horse & Hunt Club.

Lindberg’s task was to define who the manufacturer was—in other words, who was liable. He thought it was Sunridge, which branded and packaged the parsley. But when he argued his case before a jury, it disagreed, finding that Grupo Pas was the sole manufacturer.

That was problematic. American lawyers can sue foreign companies, but as Lindberg says, “That’s a pretty exotic piece of legal work,” not to mention expensive and risky.

“Everybody downstream from this mysterious entity in Mexico was deemed to be a middleman,” he says. “If everybody downstream is looked upon as a middleman, you don’t have a manufacturer” in the United States.

Lindberg appealed but lost, and the case ended with Horse & Hunt going to mediation and paying sums that Lindberg wouldn’t reveal. Because Grupo Pas is located in Mexico and not subject to U.S. laws, it wasn’t held liable. And while the jury considered Sunridge to be partially at fault, the company wasn’t asked to pay damages.

The case exposed a new level of risk for American companies importing food: If the product is bad, you may be held responsible. It also gave consumers cause for concern, because if the court can’t nail down a manufacturer, damages may not be paid out.

And it gave foreign growers, Lindberg says, near immunity against any similar lawsuits.

Lindberg tried the case at a time when anxiety over foreign products, particularly food, ran high, an anxiety that continues today. But, Lindberg says, his case doesn’t appear to have been cited in any other rulings.

He shook off the loss and moved on to other things, but sometimes when he’s at the grocery store, he can’t help but look at some grapes from Chile or bananas from Latin America and wonder what would happen if he got sick.

“There’s a ton of fresh produce and seafood coming from outside the borders of this country,” he says, “and you’d like to think that the manufacturer is the company that first brought the product into the U.S.”