Guida-Seibert Dairy Contaminated Milk to New Jersey Students Class Action

This class action has been brought against the Guida-Seibert Dairy Company by three parents, individually and on behalf of their minor children. All live in Camden County, New Jersey. On March 30, 2022, all three children drank potentially contaminated milk that originated with the Guida-Seibert Dairy Company and ended up at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, New Jersey.

Two classes have been defined for this action:

• The New Jersey Parent Class is parents or legal guardians of all students in the Camden City School District whose children ingested milk packaged or processed by the Guida-Seibert Dairy Company, doing business as Guida’s Dairy, and whose children experienced physical symptoms or illness from it.
• The New Jersey Student Class is all students in the Camden City School District, or other such school districts in New Jersey, who ingested milk packaged or processed by the Guida-Seibert Dairy Company, doing business as Guida’s Dairy, and who experienced physical symptoms or illness from it.

Two of the children attend the Early Childhood Development Center in Camden; the third goes to the Riletta T. Cream Elementary School, also in Camden. “Upon information and belief,” the complaint alleges, “the Camden City School District has a food services contract for the provision of student meals through third-party food service provider Aramark” which in turn, “[u]pon information and belief, … has a food services contract for the provision of milk through” the Guida-Seibert Dairy Company.

On Wednesday, March 30, 2022, the Camden City School District sent out an automated telephone call informing the parents that their children might have consumed milk that might have been contaminated.

Not long after this, the complaint alleges, the three parents who are plaintiffs in this case received individual calls, from a teacher or school nurse, telling them that their child had in fact drunk the potentially contaminated milk and that the child “was now exhibiting physical symptoms.” Police and EMT services were on the scene, the complaint claims, and the parents were told that “the children would be shuttled by bus to local hospitals for examination and treatment if necessary.”

The three children were all taken to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, the complaint alleges, “where medical professionals determined that the milk the students ingested had, in fact been contaminated with a commercial cleaning agent…” The complaint alleges that the cleaning agent might have been called either “Vortex” or “Vortexx,” which the complaint identifies as two different cleaning agents, noting that it is unclear which may have been the contaminant.

The complaint quotes a New Jersey local news website as saying, “A food-grade sanitizer diluted with water was inadvertently introduced [to the milk] during production.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Infliction of Emotional Distress, Negligence, Product Liability