In an article by Fred Lucas of CNSNews.com on March 09, 2007 I was quoted:
Though the state of California did not specifically identify the property where the contaminated spinach came from, a law firm which brought a class-action suit against Dole Food Company — which packaged some of the contaminated spinach — added Mission Organics to the list of defendants.
The location of the contamination really doesn’t matter to the lawsuit, said attorney Bill Marler, who represents 87 people filing a lawsuit against Dole Food Company. Nor does it matter to him that it came from a farm that was moving toward becoming an organic farm, since the spinach wasn’t sold as organic.
"There are steps all parties could have taken to prevent the contamination from getting in the spinach," Marler said. "It’s not really very significant. This is a strict product liability case and the target is Dole. How a product becomes contaminated is not something I care about."
"How a product becomes contaminated is not something I care about." What I meant to say is that in a strict product liability lawsuit how the product became contaminated does not matter a great deal in the legal context – the issue is that it should not be in a finished product in the first place.