Boar's Head listeria contamination: Lawsuit filed after Holocaust survivor dies

The family of a Holocaust survivor who died in July from listeria-contaminated Boar’s Head liverwurst has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the company in Sarasota County, Florida.

When he fell ill, the case of Gunter Morgenstein, 88, became one of 57 nationwide, including 17 confirmed in New York, tied to contaminated Boar’s Head products manufactured at a processing plant in Jarratt, Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The state Department of Health has said there have been two hospitalizations each in Nassau and Suffolk counties so far, and eight in New York City, with one case each in five upstate counties.

Morgenstein's death July 18, was the ninth, including one in New York, connected to the Boar’s Head products.

The CDC last month said laboratory data had concluded that meats sliced at delis, including Boar’s Head brand liverwurst, had been contaminated with listeria — and that more than 7 million pounds of a wide range of deli meat products shipped from the Virginia facility had been recalled as a result of the outbreak. Some of those products had sell-by dates through October 2024, the CDC said, noting listeria spreads easily across all sorts of deli equipment, surfaces, handlers and food products.

About 1,600 people are affected by the listeria bacteria each year, the CDC said, leading to an average of 260 deaths. Listeria is most likely to sicken pregnant women and newborns, as well as people 65 and older.

On July 8, the lawsuit alleges, Morgenstein was taken by ambulance to Riverside Regional Hospital in Newport News, Virginia, where he was diagnosed with listeriosis and sepsis. Hospital officials initially believed Morgenstein might recuperate before his condition began to rapidly deteriorate despite "heavy antibiotic administration," the lawsuit states. He died just over a week later.

In a statement Tuesday, the attorney for the Morgenstein family, Ron Simon, told Newsday: "Gunter Morgenstein was a great man who lived an extraordinary life. He should not have died from eating a sandwich. ... We will force Boar’s Head to make sure it never happens again."

Investigations by federal and state health agencies found a significant number of health code violations at the Virginia plant, including the presence of mold, insects, blood puddles, contaminated water, old meat residue, ceiling leaks and contaminated food surfaces, the U.S. Agriculture Department reported last week.

Boar's Head did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. In a message posted on its website last Thursday, the company said it was continuing to search for the source of contamination at the Virginia plant.

"We are conducting an extensive investigation, working closely with the USDA and government regulatory agencies, as well as with the industry’s leading food safety experts, to determine how our liverwurst produced at our Jarratt, Virginia facility was adulterated and to prevent it from happening again," the statement said.

Government inspectors logged at least 69 instances of "noncompliance" at the plant within the past year — including "several" in recent weeks, according to federal Freedom of Information Act requests, the AP reported

The lawsuit alleges that "under both federal and applicable state law, food is adulterated if it contains a 'poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious to health'" and that "the product was adulterated because it contained listeria. Thus, by the manufacture, distribution, delivery, storage, sale, and/or offering for sale of the product and/or the product’s ingredients, defendant breached its statutory and regulatory duties."

With Bart Jones

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”