When Restaurants Serve Up Dangerous Food, Lawyers Serve Up Lawsuits

When You have a meal at a restaurant, you might not expect that the food will injure you. However, some restaurants fail to adhere to safety standards and can cause serious harm that may lead to expensive medical bills. This can range from a coffee that is too hot and causes burns, to sharp objects left behind in your food.

Understanding Negligence

Regardless of the situation involved, if a business has duty of care and is negligent, you may have a personal injury claim. The defendant may be considered negligent if the actions that the defendant took are not considered actions that a reasonable and prudent person would take. 

Oftentimes, when you drink a hot cup of coffee, you may notice a warning "caution HOT." While this might seem obvious, the temperatures that some restaurants keep their coffee at is hot enough to cause burns so severe that they may require a skin graft. 

Unfortunately, many businesses do not appreciate the degree to which they can injure their employees or customers, and have even gone so far as to have state laws changed to place caps on the settlement amounts that customers can be awarded. However, you have every right to seek compensation for your injuries up to the cap.

Food Contamination

While it may be easier to argue over how hot a cup of coffee should be, it's not difficult to argue that food should be free of contamination. For example, if you became injured because you consumed a meal that contained a piece of broken glass, this would be considered an example of food contamination. 

Businesses are responsible for making sure that the products they serve are safe. Customers are protected by strict liability laws where the company preparing the food is considered directly responsible for injuries caused by the food. 

For example, if you bite down on a piece of jewelry that fell into the food and broke a tooth, you have the right to seek compensation for any dental work that you needed to have performed as well as non-economic damages that your personal injury attorney might recommend, such as mental anguish. 

Class Action Lawsuits

When a restaurant is so negligent that they have injured multiple customers, you may choose to enter into a class-action lawsuit with the help of personal injury attorney services. Restaurants have paid tens of millions of dollars in the past to these types of class action lawsuits.


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