--- title: Three Families Sue Ramona Family Naturals Market and Happy Hens Over San Diego County Salmonella Outbreak date: 2026-09-14T17:31:00-07:00 author: Bill Marler canonical_url: "https://marlerclark.com/news_events/three-families-sue-ramona-family-naturals-market-and-happy-hens-over-san-diego-county-salmonella-outbreak" section: News --- [All News](/news_events) / [Press Releases](https://marlerclark.com/news_events/press-releases) / # Three Families Sue Ramona Family Naturals Market and Happy Hens Over San Diego County Salmonella Outbreak **SAN DIEGO, California, September 14, 2026 —** Marler Clark, the food safety law firm, together with San Diego attorney Frederic L. Gordon, has filed three lawsuits in San Diego County Superior Court on behalf of Ramona-area families sickened in the *Salmonella* Enteritidis outbreak linked to raw-egg mayonnaise prepared at Ramona Family Naturals Market and to shell eggs produced by the Happy Hens egg ranch in Ramona. The three cases are *Hight v. Ramona Family Naturals, Inc. and Eben-Haezer's Happy Hens*, No. 26CU044454C, filed August 18, 2026 and amended September 4, 2026; *Terrell v. Ramona Family Naturals, Inc. and Eben-Haezer's Happy Hens*, No. 26CU047787C, filed September 8, 2026; and *Dye v. Ramona Family Naturals, Inc. and Eben-Haezer's Happy Hens*, No. \[CASE NO.\], filed September 8, 2026. Each complaint pleads strict product liability, breach of express and implied warranties, negligence and negligence per se, and loss of consortium, and each demands a jury. Marler Clark represents seven people sickened in this outbreak; these three complaints are brought on behalf of three of them and their spouses. **What the County and the State have found** On [July 28, 2026](https://www.countynewscenter.com/salmonella-outbreak-linked-to-ramona-deli/), the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency announced thirteen confirmed and probable cases, four of them hospitalized, with illness onsets back to June 21, and identified the suspect food as house-made mayonnaise prepared with raw, unpasteurized shell eggs — mayonnaise the Market used in its chicken salads and in the Ramona Red Sauce it spread on deli sandwiches and sold by the bottle. On [August 17](https://www.countynewscenter.com/ramona-salmonella-outbreak-grows/), the County named Happy Hens as the source of those eggs and reported twenty-one cases and seven hospitalizations, including illnesses in people with no connection to the Market. By August 21 the County had divided the outbreak into eighteen cases tied to the Market's mayonnaise and five in people sickened by Happy Hens eggs directly. On [September 4](https://www.countynewscenter.com/salmonella-dna-found-on-farm-tied-to-ramona-outbreak/), the County reported that FDA had collected environmental samples inside the Happy Hens hen houses — from the floors and from the perch rails and nest boxes — and that *Salmonella* was found in two of the seven houses tested, with genetic testing linking the organism at the farm to the strain carried by ill San Diegans. The County also reported that the California Department of Public Health had given those results to the farm's owners and had recommended a voluntary recall, and that as of that date no recall had been issued. **What has happened since these complaints were filed** On September 8, 2026 — the same day the last two complaints were filed — Happy Hens voluntarily recalled its brand eggs. The recall was not announced publicly until CDPH issued [a consumer warning on September 11](https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR26-029.aspx). All three complaints allege, accurately as of the dates they were signed, that no recall had been issued. The recall covers Happy Hens brand in-shell organic eggs, all grades and sizes, egg handler code CA-0677, lot codes 223, 226 and 237, with sell-by dates of September 10, 13 and 24. Those lot codes are Julian pack dates: August 11, August 14 and August 25, 2026. The recall therefore reaches eggs that were still on the shelf. It does not reach the June eggs that sickened the plaintiffs in these three cases. CDPH's September 11 warning puts the outbreak at twenty-three cases, seven hospitalizations and no deaths, with illness onsets from June 21 through August 16, and calls the outbreak ongoing. CDPH confirmed that whole genome sequencing matched the *Salmonella* Enteritidis in the two poultry-housing samples to the strain in the ill people, and described FDA's August 17 to 20 visit to the farm as a routine inspection. CDPH also published, for the first time, a [retail distribution list](https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CEH/DFDCS/CDPH%20Document%20Library/FDB/FoodSafetyProgram/FoodRecalls/ProductandRetailDistributionLists/fdbFrHHENS1d.pdf) — forty-one locations, stamped updated September 11. It includes three Whole Foods Market stores, four Jimbo's, four Grocery Outlet stores, Frazier Farms, Lofty Coffee locations, a home-delivery service operating out of Escondido, the Happy Hens farm store, and a Ramona location at 325 6th Street, which is the address of Ramona Family Naturals Market. Every address on the list is in San Diego County, although CDPH's own release says the eggs went to Southern California and the Central Coast. Happy Hens has continued to contest the findings publicly. Its owners told NBC 7 on September 5 that the farm had been compliant throughout and described the matter as "David and Goliath," and the farm posted that it had been asked to recall and had declined, and that roughly seventy-five percent of its production was being held. More recent posts argue that environmental samples are not the product and that a genetic match does not prove where an illness came from. As of today there is no recall notice on the farm's website. The farm announced on August 31 that four thousand eggs would be tested over the following two weeks; that window closed today with no published result, and the egg-sample results the County called pending on September 4 have still not been made public. **Comment from William Marler** "California law names mayonnaise. Health and Safety Code section 114012 says a food facility shall substitute pasteurized eggs for raw shell eggs in mayonnaise that is not cooked, and the only lawful way around it is a written variance from the local enforcement agency. A deli does not get to take that risk on its customers' behalf, and nothing on the deli case told these women what they were buying." "The recall came on September 8. These families got sick in late June. The recalled lots were packed in August. A recall that clears the shelf but never reaches the eggs that put people in the hospital is not a remedy for them — it is the step that should have been taken in July." "There is nothing unusual about a company disputing a finding. What is unusual is arguing it on Instagram while the eggs are still being sold. FDA found Salmonella in two of seven hen houses, and the state matched it by DNA to the strain in the patients. That is the ordinary evidence on which eggs get recalled, and it took six weeks." **About the plaintiffs** Whitney Hight, 36, of Ramona, bought the Market's Ramona Red chicken salad on June 25 and ate it at home. At the worst of her illness she had diarrhea more than twenty times a day, could not keep down a sip of water, and could not stand or walk without help. She was treated at urgent care in Ramona and then at the emergency department at Palomar Medical Center, where imaging showed colitis and inflammation involving her liver. She spent the Fourth of July in bed and missed watching her oldest son march in the Ramona parade. Her husband, Casey Hight, cared for their three young children and for her. Virginia Terrell, 37, of Ramona, had shopped at the Market for years and bought its egg salad and tuna salad in the days before she fell ill on June 28. Her diarrhea turned bloody on July 1, and her mother drove her to the emergency department at the VA San Diego Healthcare System, where imaging showed inflammation through nearly the whole of her colon. She was admitted that night — the first hospital admission of her life — and was being prepared for a colonoscopy when her stool culture returned positive and the procedure was cancelled. Because no one told her the Market's prepared foods were suspected, she kept buying the egg salad into late July. Julie Dye, 50, of Ramona, is a registered nurse with nineteen years of experience and for nine of them the nurse educator of the emergency department at Sharp Grossmont Hospital. She ate the Market's apple walnut chicken salad during the week of June 21 and was hospitalized for seven days with septic shock and acute kidney failure. She had been diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in May, and her bilateral mastectomy, scheduled for July 2, had to be pushed to July 21. She was still shedding the organism months later, barred from the emergency department where she works. **About Marler Clark** Marler Clark, [The Food Safety Law Firm](https://marlerclark.com/), is the nation's leading law firm representing victims of foodborne illness. The firm has represented thousands of individuals in claims against food companies whose contaminated products have caused life-altering injury and death, and its lawyers have litigated *Salmonella*, *E. coli*, *Listeria*, Hepatitis A, Campylobacter and Cyclospora cases in nearly every state. William Marler also publishes [Food Safety News](https://www.foodsafetynews.com/) and the [Marler Blog](https://www.marlerblog.com/), and maintains an [outbreak page for this matter](https://marlerclark.com/ramona-family-naturals-market-and-happy-hens-salmonella-outbreak-lawsuits). **Media contact** William D. Marler, Marler Clark, Inc., PS · 1-800-884-9840 · bmarler@marlerclark.com Frederic L. 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