The odds that you’ll win a case against a restaurant after you find bugs or insects in your food are pretty low. These types of cases usually are more trouble than they’re worth because they cost more to put together than what the person ends up winning in damages.
There’s another reason why these cases don’t do well in court. When you find a bug in your food, it usually doesn’t make you physically sick. It’s not the same as when you get food poisoning or some other foodborne illness which has real symptoms and causes you life-threatening harm. The legal system looks at real physical consequences.
Courts see a giant difference between real harm and just being grossed out for a while. Food poisoning cases come with hospital bills, missed work and medical records. When you find a bug in your food, it doesn’t usually cause any of these real costs. Your lawsuit needs to show real damages that a judge can add up and award to you.
Even though it upsets you to find an insect in your food, it’s very hard to get money for emotional distress because emotional injuries are much harder to prove. That’s usually what your claim would be based on after finding an insect in your food.
Judges want to see records of mental health treatment and they want experts to come in and talk about long-term mental problems. Courts won’t give you money just because you felt grossed out. The legal standard says you need proof that your mental health took real damage that can be measured.
Your Options for an Emotional Distress Claim
When someone finds an insect in their food, they’ll base their legal claim on something called intentional infliction of emotional distress. What that means is that the diner has to prove that the restaurant acted in a way that was so outrageous that it caused them emotional harm and they should get money for going through that experience.
The legal standard here needs you to show extremely outrageous behavior from the restaurant. You’ll find that judges don’t usually give out money for those kinds of kitchen mistakes that happen all of the time.
Let’s say a diner sees a bug in their food right when they’re about to take a bite. In this case, they’d have to prove that they should get money because seeing that bug upset them and the restaurant acted in that extreme way we talked about. The timing here can make the difference in these cases.
This gets very hard to prove because in most cases, the bug just crawled into the food before someone served it and no one saw it happen. Since no restaurant wants to lose customers, it’s hard to prove that the restaurant had the bad intentions you need to win a case like this.
The hardest part is when you have to prove that the restaurant did something wrong intentionally. Even when restaurants have strong safety procedures in place, kitchen accidents still happen. Your lawyer would need to show that the restaurant staff knew there was a chance bugs could get in the food but went ahead and served the meal anyway.
When Bugs in Food Make You Sick?
You may be able to sue if you actually get sick from finding and eating a bug in your food. If you want to win your case, you need to prove that there was a bug in the food and that you got sick from eating it. You also need to prove the bug was the only reason you became sick. That last part is hard to prove in court.
It’s much easier to prove physical symptoms than emotional ones. But it’s pretty rare for someone to get sick from swallowing a bug. If your stomach hurts, you need to get paperwork from a doctor who can connect it back to that particular bug. When you’re working with insurance businesses that don’t want to pay, this paperwork is going to be your biggest help. For the restaurant to be responsible, the bug would need to be a type that’s known to make people sick when they eat it, or it needs to be one that you usually find in bad food.
If you find a fly in your food at a restaurant, that’s one situation. But if you find a roach in your meal, you might have a better shot at money for it. Flies are usually harmless and restaurants can’t always stop one from landing on a plate, as long as it doesn’t happen all of the time. Roaches are different though because they could mean there’s a whole infestation in the kitchen and the food supply could be contaminated.
State and local health departments have laws about which bugs are too many and which bugs break food-safety codes. These laws spell out just what counts as careless food handling. If the restaurant doesn’t break these official laws, just being grossed out won’t be enough to get you any money. Your case can depend on if the restaurant crossed the line that health inspectors use every day when they check restaurants.
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Collect the Evidence You Need for Your Case
When someone finds an insect in their food at a restaurant, they need to tell their server and take pictures of everything. You should take photos or videos of what happened before anyone takes the plate away. Make sure that you also grab the receipt and contact info from anyone who saw what happened.
Most people don’t know what they should do when this happens. The photos and other proof you gather will be what you need if you want to file a complaint or take legal action. Restaurants will usually try to make the problem go away with a free meal or discount. But when you have photos and people who saw what happened, it gives you a real record that the restaurant management can’t just brush off or pretend didn’t happen.
Even though most people won’t get sick from finding an insect in their food, you should still go to a doctor if you start feeling sick. If a hospital or doctor says that your symptoms came from the insect, ask for copies of all your medical results and health records.
People don’t think about the medical side. But when you have medical records, it turns a basic restaurant complaint into a real health problem that has legal weight behind it. Without the right records from a doctor, restaurants can just say the insect didn’t hurt you. A medical exam gives you the proof you need to back up any claims for compensation.
You should also try to find out if other customers got sick or found insects in their food too. When multiple people have the same problem, it makes your case much stronger because it shows this wasn’t just a one-time accident. It might also make health inspectors come check out the restaurant for health code violations.
When you can show there’s a pattern, it changes your situation from just one bad experience to a bigger problem at the restaurant. Health departments pay attention when they get multiple complaints and they’ll start investigations that could shut down the restaurant or make them pay big fines. Once other people who ate there find out someone else had the same problem, they’ll usually speak up about their own experiences too.
Your Options for Restaurant Complaint Cases
Instead of going straight to a full-scale personal injury lawsuit, a restaurant customer may write an “insect in food” complaint letter directly to the restaurant or to the state or local health department. Most managers would rather handle these situations directly than go through attorneys. Most businesses will also take complaints by email.
If the only harm you experienced is being upset or disgusted, traditional court cases probably won’t work out. Courts need to see real damages beyond the fact that you felt grossed out. You’ll save time and money by skipping attorney consultations that can run you hundreds of dollars per hour. Just being emotionally upset alone almost never gets you money in food contamination cases. If you want to skip legal fees, you can file in small claims court, as the process is easier and costs less. You also have other options like filing a report with the Better Business Bureau, posting negative reviews on social media or restaurant-review websites, and just not going back to that place.
Whenever you can, you should also ask the server or a manager to pay you back for the meal. Restaurant owners know that bad news about them spreads quite a bit faster than positive reviews do. Just giving you a meal refund can stop social media disasters that might cost them thousands of dollars in lost business. Most restaurants want to fix these complaints before they show up on review sites. Most of the time, a restaurant will give you a refund or a replacement meal just to take care of the problem.
Pursuing a Lawsuit and Working with a Personal Injury Lawyer
Once you have all your evidence together, you need to figure out if you want to sue the restaurant. The best way to find out if you have a real case is to talk to a personal injury lawyer in your area. Most of them will meet with you for free. If the lawyer thinks you have a case, they’ll talk through your options with you and help you get everything ready to file your lawsuit. If you need a lawyer, LegalMatch can connect you with the right personal injury attorney who can help you with your claim.
The whole process starts when your attorney files paperwork with the court that explains what happened and how much money you’re asking for. If the court doesn’t dismiss your case from the start, you and the restaurant will go through a few steps. Discovery usually takes the longest time – often months of giving statements under oath and asking for documents from the other side.
At any time during this process, you and the restaurant can talk about settling out of court and try to work it out with a mediator, or go all of the way to trial. If you do go to trial, it usually only takes a few days. But the whole lawsuit from start to finish can take two years or even longer. You’ll be dealing with this case for a while. Once the judge makes a decision either side can ask a higher court to look at the case again.
If the lawyer tells you that you don’t have a strong enough case, they might recommend other ways to handle the situation. These other options can sometimes get you results without having to wait through a long court case. Filing a complaint with the health department usually gets the restaurant looked at within just a few days. Posting about what happened on social media lets thousands of people who might eat at that restaurant see it pretty fast.
At the end of the day, it’s hard to sue a restaurant for finding bugs in your food and most people don’t win these cases. To win in court, you need to have strong evidence and proof that you actually got sick or hurt. Your medical records are going to be the main way you prove that you were actually hurt. During the lawsuit, the restaurant’s past inspection reports usually come up. An experienced personal injury lawyer can look at what happened to you and help you get all your evidence together, build a strong case and speak for you in court or when you’re trying to work out a settlement.
