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Ohio State Student Sues Company For E. coli Tainted Lettuce

by Cara Connolly, !0 TV News Columbus

An Ohio State University student on Tuesday was the first person to file suit against an Ohio company for allegedly distributing lettuce tainted with E. coli.

The lawsuit alleges that Richard Cardinale ate the tainted lettuce somewhere on the Ohio State campus, however the university is not named in the lawsuit, 10TV's Cara Connelly reported.

Cardinale's lawyer says more needs to be done to stop people from being sickened by this strain of E. coli.

"We really don't know how big this outbreak is because not only does the government not test for E. coli, but it is not regularly tested for by hospitals and doctors and medical laboratories either," said Cardinale's attorney, Drew Falkenstein.

The suit claims there were at least 29 infected people from Ohio, New York and Michigan and they ranged in age from 13 to 29 years old, Connelly reported.

A dozen of the 29 were reportedly hospitalized and three developed a type of kidney failure.

A spokesman for Freshway Foods said the company has not been contacted regarding the lawsuit and right now it is concentrating on working with health officials on the recall.

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