It hit me like a ton of bricks one afternoon. I was pregnant at the time so my first thought was that it was due to pregnancy but it ended up in an ER visit that proved otherwise. Uncontrollable vomiting, stomach cramps and a slew of other horrendous symptoms resulted in being taken to the hospital. Due to the amount of fluids I had lost in a matter of hours I received five bags of IV. My heart rate escalated. I recall a doctor asking if I had a living will. Feeling sick was an understatement and not the result of carrying my child but some type of food poisoning. While I didn’t sue I could understand why many would want or need to but in order to do so you must take the flowing steps:
- Get to a doctor so that he can see what exactly caused the food positioning. Some food can carry pathogens such as E.coli, Campylobacter, Hepatitis A, Salmonella, Listeria and Vibrio. These pathogens can cause havoc to your body.
- If the cause of illness is due to bacteria should be examined for a DNA fingerprint. When many have got sick by the same DNA fingerprint, it’s easier to locate the source of what it was. Health officials such as the CDC will do special testing to find the DNA fingerprint. Other types of testing is performed to find the geographic location of the product that caused the illness.
- You don’t have to know the food that caused your illness to still file a lawsuit. When quite a few people contact the same bacteria from a restaurant and they consumed it during a likened time frame, health officials will correlate the cause of that sickness to eating at that restaurant.
- What occurs when you don’t feel well and go to work? You heighten the chances of those around you getting sick. Imagine how many others are affected when it comes to handling food while sick! The employee that is sick can transmit their illness by touching the food or by counters that the food was placed on. A cause of this can be the employees lack of washing their hands after using the bathroom. Hands that aren’t washed transmit bacteria once they return to handling food.
- Perhaps you didn’t finish your food at the restaurant and brought the remainders of it home. The leftovers can be used as evidence in some cases so do not discard them.
- Based on a restaurants negligence there is often bacteria within the establishment. That is why restaurants receive ratings based on whether or not they have met the criteria for being well kept. Many times there are reports of a restaurant receiving multiple violations. If so, this can help your case against the establishment. Your lawyer can use their failure to comply with food regulations to strengthen your case. There’s no reason why a place that is constantly receiving violations should neglect to fix the issue and the public is subjected to food poisoning.
A lawsuit filed for food poisoning also looks into how this has affected the individual on top of their physical suffering. Your lawyer will examine if there was loss of income from missing work, money spent for medical treatment, emotional distress and other matters that you’ve discussed.
