Methylmercury Strict Liability Claims to Proceed Against Bumble Bee
A federal court in New York has refused to dismiss claims alleging that Bumble
Bee Foods is strictly liable for and was negligent in failing to warn about the
mercury in its products in a lawsuit alleging personal injury from excessive
consumption of the company’s tuna products, which contain methylmercury.
Porrazzo v. Bumble Bee Foods, LLC, No. 10-4367 (S.D.N.Y., order
entered February 27, 2014). An earlier ruling in the case is summarized in Issue
413 of this Update.
The plaintiff, who apparently consumed one to two cans of tuna daily for
more than two years and was diagnosed with dangerously high levels of
mercury in his body, also brought claims for breach of implied warranty of
merchantability and violations of certain state statutory provisions involving
agricultural and business law. The court found that the issues argued in
Bumble Bee’s motion for summary judgment involved genuine issues
of material fact that were for a jury to decide. Among other matters, the
company argued that the level of methylmercury in its tuna was below the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) internal enforcement guideline
and that the agency does not require warnings about methylmercury on fish
product labels.
As to the latter, the court said, “the FDA’s decision not to adopt a warning
requirement does nothing to absolve defendants of liability if they breached
their common law duty to warn. To hold otherwise would entirely vitiate the
failure to warn doctrine, rendering proof of such claim impossible unless a
federal agency specifically mandated the missing warning. The Court declines
to adopt such unworkable rule.”
Issue 515
