Food Poisoning
Food Poisoning Attorney Services in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia
Need help finding a food poisoning lawyer? Food-borne illness, or food poisoning, as a term, encompasses both sickness from contaminated food and sickness passed to you through your food by a sick employee. Although food-borne illness is frequently mild, it can be incredibly severe. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that every year 128,000 people are hospitalized from food borne illness and three thousand people die from food borne illness. Although food borne illness is sometimes difficult to prove in court, if you follow a few steps after getting a food borne illness and hire the experienced Washington DC injury lawyers at Cohen & Cohen right away, and you will have a great chance at winning your food borne illness and food poisoning lawsuit.
Of the 128,000 yearly food poisoning victims who end up in the hospital each year, a surprising 3,000 of them die. If a loved one or a family member has died because of food poisoning as a result of someone else’s negligence, you may be entitled to compensation.
Food poisoning can look a lot like the stomach flu, but it is not. Food poisoning can have a wide range of symptoms. The most common symptoms are nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach cramps, chills, and fever.
If you were served uncooked, raw or unsafe food and you got sick as a result of that, you may be entitled to compensation for your losses.
Food Poisoning Causes:
Food poisoning and foodborne illnesses are most commonly caused when bacteria, viruses, or parasites are in the food we consume. Some of the most common causes of Washington DC food poisoning are E-coli, salmonella, listeria, and Staphylococcus. The most severe food poisoning cases can result in death or extreme illness.
Food can be contaminated at a restaurant, when it is manufactured at the plant, or when it is harvested. It can be harvested and manufactured safely, but if someone at a restaurant does not handle it properly or have a clean and safe work space, that person can contaminate the food. Some foods are more likely to carry foodborne illness and food poisoning and should be handled carefully.
meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, and dairy often carry foodborne illnesses. Some vegetables, like leafy greens, spinach and romaine lettuce, have had foodborne illness outbreaks in recent years. Even Ice creams and ice cream companies can also contain food borne illnesses like literia.
There are many food safety regulations that have been put in place to serve as roadblocks to prevent outbreaks of mass foodborne illnesses, however sometimes those roadblocks fail or fall down. There are also many standards that restaurants must keep up with in order to limit individualized incidents of food poisoning. Of course when these standards are disregarded or not followed, eaters can contract mild, serious, life-threatening or life-ending illnesses as a result.
The most common causes of food poisoning are raw or undercooked meat, cross-contamination on cooking surfaces, poorly washed food, failing to wash hands before handling food and failing to refrigerate foods before or after cooking.
If you are planning to file a DC food poisoning lawsuit, food poisoning cases usually fall into one of two categories: defective products or negligence. If you purchased a food product from a store and you get food poisoning, you may be able to argue that the company responsible for manufacturing, harvesting, and/or selling the food is strictly liable for a defective product that caused you injury and/or suffering.
If a restaurant prepares your food improperly or doesn’t have food preparation areas that clean or employees that are properly trained in health and safety, which results in you getting food poisoning or a foodborne illness, you may be entitled to compensation if the restaurant can be found negligent.
If you have experienced food poisoning as a result of negligence or a defective product, you may be entitled to compensation for economic and non-economic damages.
Steps To Winning A Food Borne Illness Lawsuit
The first step to winning your food borne illness lawsuit is finding out exactly what made you sick and collecting evidence to prove which food made you sick. Figuring out which food you ate made you sick can be tough because different types of food borne illnesses have different incubation rates. You need to be diagnosed with a specific food borne pathogen in order to carry out your case and be able to prove it was in the restaurant’s food. If you happen to have saved leftovers from the restaurant, save them and have them tested for the pathogen that afflicted you.
Second, you need to have pulsed-field gel electrophoreses testing done. PFGE will show if the food borne illness you were afflicted by matches the genetics of the food borne illness other people were afflicted by. If multiple people who ate at a restaurant had the same food borne illness and their PFGEs match, then you have solid evidence against the restaurant.
Finally, figure out if the sickness that affected you came from infected food or a sick employee. If you caught a sickness that an employee had, you could be entitled to more compensation. Because restaurants are heavily regulated and inspected to prevent the spread of disease, allowing a sick employee to work may be a punishable offense. If you can prove that you were sick because of a sick employee and if the restaurant has a history of allowing sick employees to work, the restaurant may have to pay you additional punitive damages, depending on the law of the state you are in.
Contact Our Food Poisoning Attorneys To Discuss Your Case
If you or someone in your family has recently been affected by a crippling food borne illness, call the food borne illness attorneys at Cohen & Cohen today. Whether you are just beginning to collect evidence for your lawsuit or you have all of the evidence previously listed here, the experienced food borne illness attorneys at Cohen & Cohen can evaluate your case and advice you of what to do next. Depending on the evidence you are able to collect, you could be entitled to compensation for your pain and suffering, medical bills, attorney fees, and even time away from work. If you qualify for punitive damages compensation than you could be entitled to even more. Call the respected attorneys at Cohen & Cohen today to get your food borne illness case started!
Please do not rely on any specific information contained here. If you have a food poisoning case, contact a lawyer today.
