Dole sued for outbreak

The Herald Salinas Bureau reports that legal action is mounting in connection to a recent E. coli outbreak that affected at least 17 people who said they became sick after eating Dole Fresh Vegetable bagged salads.
Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark law firm in Seattle, will be filing on behalf of a woman in Oregon, and has been contacted by five other people in regards to filing lawsuits.
The outbreak in question effected at least 17 people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area who ate one of three Dole bagged salads at the end of September and were infected with E. coli 0157:H7, the most dangerous strain of the bacteria. A nationwide recall of 245,000 bags of produce, all grown in the Salinas valley, was the result.
This is the fourth E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak connected to produce grown in the Salinas Valley since 2002. Three other cases, reported between July 2002 and October 2003, involved contaminated lettuce and spinach that sickened at least 114 people and killed an elderly woman.