Taco John’s suing food supplier for contaminated lettuce
Less than a year after contaminated lettuce was blamed for making dozens of customers sick, Taco John's corporations in South Dakota and surrounding states are suing food suppliers for negligence. The class-action lawsuit, filed in federal court in Sioux Falls, seeks a jury trial and $5 million. The plaintiffs named are Taco John's corporations in Iowa, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota. Defendants are Bix Produce Company and Roma Food Enterprises. The cover sheet on the filing describes the cause of the action as "negligence in the handling of food." The U.S. District Judge agreed to seal the complaint, so little else about the initial filing is publicly available. It is unclear if the lawsuit is connected to last year's E. coli contamination, but The Associated Press reported in December that Taco John's International dropped Bix Produce as a supplier in the wake of that outbreak.
