Legal Question in Product Liability in Texas

After preparing dinner for my family, tonight, as I went to serve the frozen spinach that I steamed, I noticed a large piece of a green bug in my spinach!! It was the exact same color as the spinach with two antennae and everything!! How gross!! I had just opened the spinach so I still have the rest of the bag and I saved the bug and the steamed spinach still together in the bowl I steamed it in. We are all disgusted!! Who's liable for this?? Yuck.

Asked on 11/30/09, 9:57 pm

2 Answers from Attorneys

Dan Street Street Law Firm

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I see questions like this all the time so I felt it was past time that an attorney took a few minutes and provided an answer. Let me offer this disclaimer first: I am a personal injury attorney and make my living suing negligent individuals and businesses who cause injury to my clients.

Whether or not a person has a viable claim against another depends upon your ability to prove two factors (and please understand that I am grossly over-simplifying here and also using basic layman's language): (1) Negligence (that is, whether there has been some careless or irresponsible conduct), and (2) Damages (whether there has been some actual--usually economic--harm done). While I fully understand how something like this could certainly gross you out (and probably even cause significant mental anxiety everytime you see spinach from now on), in truth, there are really no damages here (at least, not enough to justify the cost of pursuing the claim). Even if someone had ingested a bug, unless it made them quite ill (such that they incurred a significant amount of medical bills) there are still not enough damages to justify doing anything about it.

Sometimes people get the idea that, just because they found a foreign substance in their food, they are entitled to some whopping sum of money. Let me assure you that a jury would disagree with you (and what juries think is what ultimately determines the value of a claim, or even whether you have a claim at all). Again, I am not nominalizing your anxiety over this; I am simply pointing out that our society does not place much value on your "emotional distress" at having seen a bug in your spinach. (You might also be surprised to learn that the FDA actually allows bug parts, maggots, rat excrement, and other "organic matter" to be present in food items. The percentage of total volume varies from one food to another. Bon appetit!)

Answered on 12/05/09, 10:42 pm

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