Attorneys Scott Ober and Patrick Ciapciak successfully obtained affirmation from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for dismissal of a California lettuce grower facing suit in New Hampshire due to lack of contacts.
Plaintiff alleged that in 2019 he consumed salad at a deli in New Jersey that contained romaine lettuce contaminated with e.Coli, but did not suffer the symptoms of the infection until he returned to his home state of New Hampshire. He brought suit three years later against all entities involved in the supply chain of that lettuce, including two California lettuce growers, a national food distributor, and the New Jersey deli. Despite presenting Plaintiff with the FDA/CDC investigation that found that only the other grower in the suit and not their client was found to be the source of an e.Coli outbreak in 2019, Plaintiff dismissed the other grower and deli, and proceeded only against the other defendants.
In the United States District Court – New Hampshire, Attorney Ciapciak successfully moved to dismiss the claim on jurisdiction grounds because discovery had shown his client had no connections with New Hampshire. Specifically, his client only grows lettuce at its farms in California and Arizona, and even though its products are shipped nationwide including to distributors in some Southern New England states, those shipments are beyond the grower’s control after loading up the product in California. The District Court also dismissed the co-defendant food distributor on jurisdictional grounds.
On appeal, the Plaintiff asserted the lettuce grower did have sufficient connections in New Hampshire because there was evidence that its product eventually ended up in some supermarkets there. Attorney Ober handled oral arguments and rebutted that not only did his client make no efforts to distribute its product to New Hampshire, but even if so the retail sale of lettuce there had no connection to Plaintiff’s consumption of lettuce in a salad in New Jersey. The court agreed, and affirmed the dismissal.
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