Woman died in E. coli outbreak

Marler Clark has filed a lawsuit in Sarpy County District Court on behalf of a Bellevue woman who died from complications of E. coli.

Attorney Bill Marler says 81-year-old Ruby Trautz died of acute kidney failure in late August. Trautz’s death has since been linked to the national E. coli outbreak related to tainted spinach.

Marler’s firm has filed seven other lawsuits across the country on behalf of victims of the outbreak. The Sarpy County suit names “John Doe Farms,” the Dole Food Company, Natural Selections Foods and No Frills Supermarkets as defendants.

“FDA owes it to the American public, and to the victims of this outbreak in particular, to release information as to the identity of the spinach farm,” Marler said in a press release. “This far into the outbreak investigation, FDA should already have named the farm where the spinach came from. We included John Doe Farms as a defendant to try to get more answers for our clients.”

The Trautz lawsuit is the first of all Marler’s cases to go after both the farm where the spinach was grown and the retail outlet where it was sold.

“It is time that the fresh produce industry, from farm to grocery store, takes responsibility for what happened,” he said.