SAN ANTONIO — A lawsuit against Torchy's Tacos, Success Foods Management Group, LLC. and ProSource Produce, LLC. has been filed by a Bexar County woman on behalf of her son who reportedly developed salmonella after eating contaminated onions at the restaurant.
The document, which can be read here, shows Food Safety Law Firm Marler Clark and the Hill Law Firm of San Antonio representing the child.
The document says on Aug. 21, the plaintiff ate dinner at Torchy's on 18210 Sonterra Place.
Six days later, "He began to experience exhaustion and a headache. His symptoms progressed over the next ten days with increasing intensity. He developed a fever, diarrhea, and intense pain in his lower back," the document says.
He was taken to an emergency room on Sept. 3, but was unable to be diagnosed.
The document says on or about Sept. 7, "He was in such intense pain he could not walk or sit up, and he was taken to the Methodist Children’s Hospital where he received treatment for complications from his Salmonella Oranienburg infection in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit."
The infection reportedly led to sepsis, organ failure, pneumonia, acidosis, thrombocytopenia, a pericardial effusion, interstitial emphysema and extreme pain when it reached the bones around his sacroiliac joint.
The document says the boy is continuing to be treated daily with long-term IV antibiotics for Salmonella Oranienburg.
As for the onions, the document says, "At the time the food product left control of the Defendants, it was defective and unreasonably dangerous in that it was not adequately manufactured or marketed to minimize the risk of injury or death."
It then continues saying Torchy's owed a duty to the child as a customer to take, "Reasonable care to prevent the manufacture, distribution, and sale of food products contaminated with Salmonella, E. Coli, or other foodborne pathogens."
The child's family is seeking more than $200,000 in this case, which would cover things such as medical expenses and future expenses.
Torchy's issued the following statement regarding the lawsuit:
This week we learned that we are being sued based on an allegation that on August 21 a guest ate food from our Sonterra San Antonio restaurant and a week later became ill. This October lawsuit filing was the first notice we have received about this claim.
At Torchy’s, our number one priority is providing safe and delicious food to our guests. We take this claim very seriously and have retained nationally respected food safety experts to track our food supply in August to see if they can find a connection between food we served then and this claim.
We can report our Sonterra location has a uniform record of excellent health inspection scores, including a 100-score routine inspection from the City of San Antonio Metropolitan Health District as recently as October 8, 2021.
Our thoughts are with this guest and his family and we hope for continued recovery.
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