After a years-long legal battle between the Yuma, Arizona-based grower Desert Premium Farms and the Salinas harvester and distributor Andrew Smith Company, a Monterey County Superior Court jury concluded on Jan. 14 that the grower is not responsible for a 2018 E. coli outbreak caused by romaine lettuce.
According to court documents, in 2018, multiple individuals became ill with a strain of E. coli after consuming items containing romaine lettuce at Panera Cafes. Following an investigation conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration months after the incident, the bacterial strain was traced back to the Wellton growing area of Yuma, Arizona, where Desert Premium Farms and other growers operate. However, the investigators were unable to locate the specific point in the growing area where the lettuce was contaminated.
At the time, the Andrew Smith Company – founded in 1973 by Salinas native Andy Smith and now defunct due to reasons unrelated to this case – was contracted with Desert Premium Farms and other growers in the region to harvest romaine lettuce and distribute it to Panera’s processing facility. During the 2017-2018 growing season, Desert Premium Farms supplied the distributor with 8 million pounds of romaine lettuce, roughly 125,000 pounds of which came from a ranch irrigated with water from the Wellton area canal, where investigators found E. coli samples that matched the strain that sickened 13 Panera customers in 2018.
In 2021, the Allied World Insurance Company, acting for the Andrew Smith Company, filed a lawsuit in Monterey Superior Court to recover money spent defending three of the injury claims stemming from the 2018 outbreak, totaling roughly $8.6 million in settlements and $350,000 in defense costs from Desert Premium Farms.
Desert Premium Farms argued that it wasn’t contractually obligated to pay the costs and pointed out that pre-harvest testing conducted by the Andrew Smith Company did not identify traces of E.coli on the lettuce that was ultimately distributed.
The attorneys for Desert Premium Farms explained in court arguments that their client was one of several growers contracted to grow romaine lettuce in 2018 and that the Andrew Smith Company harvested the crop and mixed it with lettuce from other suppliers at processing facilities before it reached consumers. They also made the case that the Andrew Smith Company could not prove without a doubt that the tainted lettuce was harvested from land owned by Desert Premium Farms and that it never ruled out the possibility that the lettuce was contaminated through its own actions.
Attorneys representing both parties did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.
After a trial in Monterey, a jury concluded on Jan. 14 that Desert Premium Farms did not break its contractual obligations and would not be responsible for the settlement and defense costs.