Lawyer: DeFusco's Zeppole Salmonella Case Among Worst in 20 years

The salmonella outbreak linked to tainted zeppoles made at DeFusco’s Bakery is one of the worst in more than 20 years, said a lawyer with a leading food safety law firm.

The same firm is on behalf of several families who were stricken with salmonella after eating baked goods from the beleaguered bakery.

Drew Falkenstein of Seattle-based Marler Clark, a law firm that specializes in food safety cases, said the outbreak “has left a trail of devastation” particularly because so many elderly people were served the zeppoles.

“It’s a sad situation,” he said. “For a lot of people, salmonella is something you can get over. It’s a couple weeks of severe gastrointestinal illness. I don’t think I’ve seen a salmonella outbreak with such a high number of hospitalizations.”

Falkenstein was in the area to sit down with more than 10 families who contacted the firm in the days following the first suit filed by the Carrerra family of Rehoboth.

The numbers make the zeppole incident stand out. The traditional St. Joseph’s Day Italian pastry ended up consumed by such a large number of the most at-risk people because they were served at several senior centers and assisted living facilities.

For a healthy adult, a salmonella infection usually causes a period of severe, but survivable, digestive illness. For older people, it can be a life-threatening crisis. And this strain of salmonella was particularly virulent, which is why so many people have been hospitalized, Falkenstein said. Four people remained hospitalized midweek last week. Twenty-nine were hospitalized in all. Two people have died.

The statistics look like what’s usually seen during an E. coli outbreak, Falkenstein said. And the financial toll could be well over $1 million since older folks need more complex care for such a severe illness.

“With 29 people hospitalized, four still hopsitalized month later, you’re probably talking about $1 million in medical expenses alone,” Falkenstein said.

Marler-Clark represented about 100 people after the major outbreak of E. coli from tainted Dole spinach in 2006. Falkenstein said the spinach incident was a perfect storm as a nationally-distributed raw product was eaten by both the young and the old. More than 200 got sick, 100 were hospitalized and five people died.

In comparison, the zeppole incident is much less high-profile and E. coli outbreaks tend to wreak more havoc than salmonella cases. And it’s not as if DeFusco’s zeppoles are in nearly every supermarket in the country.

It was the unusual concentration of older people who were served the product that led to such a terrible toll.

“You don’t always see food safety failures at the level we see here,” Falkenstein said.

The state Department of Health followed an investigative trail in late March that started when people began to turn up sick. The common thread was soon revealed to be zeppoles. The scent led to DeFusco’s, which apparently produced significant amounts of zeppoles for sale at its Johnston and Cranston locations and a slew of other retail bakeries and distributors.

A health department inspection revealed unsanitary practices, including the storage of pastry cream at unsafe temperatures and the alarming use of used egg crates to store pastry shells. There were other infractions, such as a lack of working sinks, employees not washing hands and overall uncleanliness at the bakery, according to the health department.

Though the health department was unable to find salmonella on any food samples taken from the bakery, the smoking gun was found right at the start of April when test samples from the crates .

The reports are scathing enough that Falkenstein said he expects the arguments in court will have little to do with liability.

“I don’t plan on spending a lot of time talking to them about whether they’re liable,” he said. “It’s a matter of what’s a fair amount of compensation for the people who were affected by their failure with the product and the manufacture of the product. I know Steve DeFusco and the folks at bakery didn’t mean to do this, there’s no doubt about that, but the bakery was careless in the way it handled food.”

The health department ordered the bakery remain closed until the violations are fixed. Both the Johnston and locations remain closed. 

Calls to DeFusco’s Bakery were unreturned.

Marler Clark will not sue the distributors or catering company that obtained zeppoles from DeFusco’s. In some situations they too can be found liable for passing along tainted product and in some states, they can sue their suppliers. Falkenstein said the firm is not representing any distributors nor does it have the intention of pursuing damages from them.

“The defendants are DeFusco’s and they are the ones who had a failure with the product,” Falkenstien said.

The current toll, according to the health department is:

•  70 cases total, 69 in Rhode Island, 1 in Massachusetts.
• 29 hospitalizations.
• 42 lab-confirmed salmonella infections.