Couple Whose Baby Died File $2-Million Suit Against Jalisco
The first in what is expected to become a flurry of lawsuits against Jalisco Mexican Products Inc. was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday on behalf of a young couple whose 2-day-old child died April 12 at UCI Medical Center in Orange.
The suit, filed by San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, asks $2 million in damages. It claims that the infant’s mother, Maria Eugenia de la Luz, ate Jalisco cheese containing Listeria monocytogenes bacteria and that the baby girl died as a result.
Belli said he plans to file about 15 more wrongful death suits before the weekend, both in Los Angeles and Orange counties, involving children whose deaths have been linked to the contaminated cheese.
Members of the De la Luz family could not be reached Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Jalisco, which voluntarily stopped selling its dairy products a week ago in the wake of mounting deaths and illnesses attributed to bacteria found in its cheeses, announced Wednesday that it would temporarily lay off about 100 employees.
The move came after company president Gary McPherson said Jalisco was unable to secure continued financing from its bank to meet its payroll. He did not identify the bank but said Jalisco hopes to find other temporary jobs and benefits for the workers.
McPherson said the company was reviewing its financial situation and hoped to notify employees about their pay and other benefits as quickly as possible. He also said the company would share whatever money it may have on hand Friday with employees.
The cutoff of payroll funds raised a question of whether Jalisco, apparently battered financially, would be able to pay for the massive recall of its products.
Jill Dominique, a spokeswoman for the public relations firm hired by Jalisco, had no comment as to whether the company would leave the cost of the recall to distributors or state and county governments. She said Jalisco was reviewing its financial situation.
Source Still Unfound
The company voluntarily shut down its Artesia processing plant last Thursday and began recalling its products across the nation. State inspectors have been scouring the plant looking for a source of the bacteria but, so far, to no avail. They also have gone to 27 dairies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties that supplied milk to the plant to see if the herds might have the infection.
As the search continued, the death toll rose to at least 34 in the listeriosis outbreak, with new deaths reported as far away as Texas.
In Riverside County, the mother of a 4-day-old boy who died of the ailment April 27 told health investigators she had eaten the cheese.
“We inquired of the mother, and she admitted to eating Jalisco cheese during pregnancy,” said Manzoor Massey, director of health education at the Riverside County Health Department. “She recalled a brief . . . diarrheal illness one month prior to the birth.”
In Fort Worth, health officials said they found leftover Jimenez brand queso fresco cheese in the refrigerator of an 83-year-old woman who died at a hospital Wednesday. Jimenez is one of four brands of cheese manufactured by Jalisco. However, tests were still being conducted on the cheese.
In the other case, authorities said a 28-year-old Houston woman who had eaten the cheese throughout her pregnancy gave birth to a stillborn infant.
Concerned over the publicity linking contaminated cheese with deaths and illnesses, Jalisco has hired the nation’s largest public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller.
The New York-based firm helped Johnson & Johnson restore its image after the Tylenol poisoning scare in 1982, when several people died after taking Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide.
Hired by Union Carbide
Last year, Union Carbide Corp. hired Burson-Marsteller in a bid to offset a loss of public faith following the gas leak tragedy in Bhopal, India, that killed more than 2,000 people.
In other developments Wednesday, state Department of Food and Agriculture inspectors began dye testing on milk storage tanks, cheese vats and other equipment at the Artesia processing plant to determine if there are any open seams where seepage could occur.
Samples were also being taken from recalled cheese as it was brought to the Jalisco plant. Another truckload of cheese was driven from the plant to the Puente Hills landfill, where 38,000 pounds of cheese were dumped Tuesday.
State Department of Food and Agriculture spokeswoman Jan Wessell said the investigation was continuing into whether unlicensed workers ever operated the plant’s pasteurizing equipment. Only one employee was licensed to run the equipment.
“We’re questioning them and looking at the paper work to see if anyone who had not been licensed was operating the equipment during pasteurization,” Wessell said. “We have not found, at this point in time, anyone other than the licensed individual who did the pasteurization.”
