Were You Injured from a Foreign Object in Your Food?
Posted July 30th, 2018 by Anthony Carbone, PC.
Categories: Personal Injury.
It’s early in the morning, and you are still quite groggy. While you haven’t come out of your dream-dazed fog yet, you pour a cup of coffee and a big bowl of cereal to get your day started. As the caffeine from the coffee and sugar from the cereal starts giving you life, your teeth crunch down on something extremely hard…
Something feels wrong. You rush to your kitchen sink and spit everything in your mouth out – milk, chewed up cereal, blood, parts of your teeth, and what looks like a shiny metallic object. You can’t believe your eyes. How did something like that end up in your cereal box?
The Personal Injury Aspect
Food manufacturers aren’t perfect. There are rare instances when foreign objects, such as shards of glass or metal, pebbles, or bugs find their way into your meal. What’s worse is when the foreign object injures you. Whether it’s the fault of the manufacturer of whoever prepares your food, you may be able to sue for damages.
Foreign objects found in food are typically considered personal injury cases in New Jersey. According to the law, a foreign object is something that is not reasonably expected to be found by a consumer during the consumption of food. This can include some of the objects we named, such as glass, metal, and rocks. But, it could also be an ingredient that was not listed and wasn’t expected to be included in the product or meal. An example of this could be someone who has a peanut allergy buying a product that doesn’t contain peanuts but ends up finding peanuts in the product and suffers an allergic reaction because of it.
While that example is a worst-case scenario of what could happen, there are other examples that occur more regularly that the law doesn’t take seriously. These could include finding a chicken bone in chicken noodle soup or apple seeds in an apple pie.
Yes, they are foreign objects, but they can reasonably be anticipated to be found in these types of food. Claims that have been made based on these common occurrences have been scoffed out of court because of their non-serious nature. Courts will only award damages to someone who was seriously affected by foreign objects found in their food. This includes:
- Cuts that occurred in the mouth or throat
- Damaged teeth
- Illness from the ingestion of a foreign object
- Allergic reactions
- Lacerations found inside the body
If one of these injuries happened to you because of a foreign object in your food, you should pursue legal action. To do this, you are going to need to prove that the food manufacturer or whoever served you the food was negligent. The evidence needed will have to prove if the injury was foreseeable by the manufacturer, restaurant, etc.; whether reasonable care was used; if the injury was directly caused by the foreign object; and whether any real damages were suffered as a result.
To receive damages for a foreign object found in your food, you must prove that you suffered in some way, shape, or form. Otherwise, you may simply receive a free box of cereal from a manufacturing company or free meal from a restaurant if you found an object that didn’t belong and didn’t suffer any type of injury.
Contact Personal Injury Attorney Anthony Carbone
If you are the victim of injury from a foreign object found in your food, you have a right to justice. Attorney Anthony Carbone has been fighting for those that have been injured by negligence across New Jersey. Contact our firm today for free consultation.
