--- title: Marler Clark to File First Lawsuit in the Evergreen Fresh Sprouts Salmonella Outbreak on Behalf of a Seattle Pediatric Intensive Care Nurse date: 2026-10-11T09:05:00-07:00 author: Bill Marler canonical_url: "https://marlerclark.com/news_events/marler-clark-to-file-first-lawsuit-in-the-evergreen-fresh-sprouts-salmonella-outbreak-on-behalf-of-a-seattle-pediatric-intensive-care-nurse" section: News --- [All News](/news_events) / [Press Releases](https://marlerclark.com/news_events/press-releases) / # Marler Clark to File First Lawsuit in the Evergreen Fresh Sprouts Salmonella Outbreak on Behalf of a Seattle Pediatric Intensive Care Nurse **SEATTLE, Washington — October 9, 2026 —** Marler Clark, Inc., PS, the Seattle-area law firm that represents victims of foodborne illness, today filed the first lawsuit arising from the 2026 *Salmonella* Bovismorbificans outbreak linked to broccoli sprouts grown by Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, LLC of Moyie Springs, Idaho. The complaint, *Mondau v. Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, LLC*, was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington on behalf of Anna Mondau, a 42-year-old registered nurse in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital and the mother of three young children, and her husband, Bryan Mondau. On Saturday, September 5, 2026, during the first of three consecutive twelve-hour Labor Day weekend shifts, Ms. Mondau ate a sandwich made with Evergreen broccoli sprouts at a Seattle restaurant. Evergreen’s recall of its broccoli sprouts was announced on September 10, 2026, after an unopened package of the sprouts collected from a sick person’s home in Montana tested positive for *Salmonella* — five days after Ms. Mondau ate the sandwich and two days after she fell ill. The recalled bags carried use-by dates running through September 16. Ms. Mondau fell ill on September 8 with abdominal cramping, nausea, diarrhea, fever and chills. A stool specimen was positive for *Salmonella* on September 13. She became severely dehydrated and was treated over the following two and a half weeks with three successive courses of antibiotics, including a series of painful intramuscular injections. She lost more than eleven pounds, could not safely leave the vicinity of a bathroom for two weeks, missed multiple nursing shifts, and exhausted nearly all of her accrued sick leave. On October 5, Public Health – Seattle & King County informed her that whole genome sequencing had matched her infection to the outbreak strain. “By the time Evergreen’s recall was announced on September 10, our client had been sick for two days,” said Brian Ernst, a Marler Clark attorney representing the Mondaus. “People in Washington had been getting sick from these sprouts since July. Bags with use-by dates running to September 16 were in restaurant kitchens and on store shelves when the recall finally reached the public.” As of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s September 24 update, 32 people infected with the outbreak strain have been reported from six states: Washington (24), Montana (4), Idaho, Minnesota, Oregon and Utah (one each). Three have been hospitalized. Illnesses began between July 7 and September 3. The Washington State Department of Health counts seven of the Washington cases in King County. Broccoli sprouts collected from a sick person’s home in Montana, and from a grocery store and a sick person’s home in Washington, all carried the outbreak strain. CDC says the true number of sick people is likely much higher than the number reported, because many people recover without medical care and are never tested. On October 7, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported that a sample of seed it collected from the seed supplier identified in its investigation tested positive for *Salmonella* and matched the outbreak strain by whole genome sequencing, and that the supplier had recalled the implicated lot, seed lot W4105. FDA now describes the outbreak as one linked to broccoli sprouts and microgreens grown from a contaminated seed lot, lists product distribution as nationwide, and says it is continuing to work with the supply chain. FDA has not named the seed supplier. Three retail sellers of broccoli sprouting seed have recalled seed from the lot: Home Grown brand seed sold by EAK Distribution of Casper, Wyoming (October 2), Eden Brothers of Arden, North Carolina (October 7), and Gardeners Basics of Spanish Fork, Utah (October 9). The recalled seed was sold to home sprouters nationwide through Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, TikTok Shop and the sellers’ own websites. “This is the third outbreak traced to this grower since 2011, and Washington has borne the brunt of it,” Ernst said. “The seed that grew these sprouts is now being pulled back from home gardeners on Amazon, which tells you how far upstream this problem began. But the grower chose that seed, and the federal rule that governs sprout growers required it to treat the seed and to test the water that ran off the sprouts for *Salmonella* before anything shipped. We intend to find out, through discovery, how contaminated seed became contaminated sprouts on a sandwich in Seattle. Anyone who ate broccoli sprouts in August or September and became ill should see a doctor and ask that any positive sample be kept for sequencing.” Evergreen Fresh Sprouts was linked in 2011 to a five-state *Salmonella* Enteritidis outbreak that sickened 25 people, and in 2014 to an *E. coli* O121 outbreak traced to its raw clover sprouts that sickened 19 people in six states, eleven of them in Washington. During the 2014 investigation FDA inspectors documented unsanitary conditions at the firm’s facility, and FDA and CDC met with the company’s owner to persuade it to stop using the implicated seed lot. Marler Clark filed four lawsuits against Evergreen on behalf of people sickened in that outbreak. **A warning label petition, twenty-eight years in the making** The lawsuit comes as Marler Clark managing partner William Marler prepares to file a citizen petition asking FDA to require a warning statement on the label of packaged raw and lightly cooked sprouts. FDA first advised children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems not to eat raw sprouts in 1998, later added pregnant women, and has repeated the advice in every sprout outbreak notice since, including the two open now. The advice has never appeared on a package. Marler posted the draft petition on Marler Blog on September 27 and invited public comment through today; he expects to file it with FDA this month. “Twenty-eight years ago FDA told the people most likely to be killed by a raw sprout not to eat one, and in all that time it has never once put that sentence on the bag,” Marler said. “I first asked the agency for a label in 2003. The petition asks for the same thing the agency required for unpasteurized juice in 1998 and for shell eggs in 2000: a prescribed warning, in a box, where the purchasing decision is made, with a placard at the deli counter and the same statement on seed sold for sprouting at home.” “FDA has now found the outbreak strain in the seed,” Marler added. “That is the case for the label in one sentence. The organism can be inside the seed where no wash reaches it, the rule that governs sprout growers does not reach the seed grower, and the shopper is told none of it. A warning on the package does not stop contamination. It gives the person who will bear the consequence the information FDA has had since 1998.” The petition, submitted under 21 CFR 10.30, asks FDA to amend 21 CFR 101.17 to require the statement, to permit a point-of-sale placard for small packages and for sprouts sold unpackaged, to extend the statement to seed sold at retail for home sprouting, to add raw sprouts to the Food Code consumer advisory that restaurants already print for raw oysters and rare hamburgers, and to exempt sprouts cooked through or treated by a validated process that achieves a measured reduction in the finished product. **About Marler Clark** Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm, is the nation’s leading law firm representing victims of foodborne illness. Since the 1993 Jack in the Box *E. coli* outbreak, the firm has represented thousands of people sickened by contaminated food, including plaintiffs in sprout outbreaks linked to Caudill Seed Company (2009), Jimmy John’s clover sprouts, sprouted chia seed powder (2013–14), Wonton Foods mung bean sprouts (2014), Sprouts Extraordinaire (2016), and Evergreen Fresh Sprouts (2014). The firm’s attorneys have testified before Congress, taught food safety at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and petitioned federal agencies on behalf of consumers for more than two decades. **Contact** William D. Marler, Marler Clark, Inc., PS — bmarler@marlerclark.com — 1-800-884-9840 Brian D. 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