A mother is taking Chipotle to court on the behalf of her son, after he contracted norovirus from the burrito chain that has sickened more than 150 people.
On December 4, Alexander Dow ate a burrito from a Boston Chipotle. Two days later, he began uncontrollably vomiting and was taken to Children's Hospital in Boston.
Soon, news of the norovirus outbreak linked to Chipotle broke, as a number of Boston College students reported illnesses after eating at the same Chipotle restaurant. Alexander's family connected his sickness to the outbreak, and reported his illness to health authorities.
On Thursday, Alexander's mother, Andrea Dow, filed the case on behalf of her son, seeking compensation for Alexander's pain, injuries, and disruption of his daily life. The case alleges that Chipotle failed to exercise ordinary and reasonable care as a restaurant, deceiving customers.
Alexander will be represented by his mother, a partner at Dow and Associates, and William D. Marler, managing partner at Marler Clark LLP. Marler Clark is a food safety law firm that has dealt with a number of similar lawsuits, including suits related to Chipotle's recent E. coli and salmonella outbreaks.
"Chipotle really needs to get its act together," Marler said in a post on the Food Poison Journal. "I've been doing this for almost 25 years, and the number of possible cases in such a short period of time is something I've never really seen before."
Chipotle's communications director Chris Arnold told Business Insider in incidents like this, Chipotle's aim is to work with customers to see that these issues are resolved. It is not the company's policy to comment on details surrounding pending legal actions
NBC Today Show
Chipotle CEO Steve Ells has promised new safety procedures, including moving some food preparation to a central kitchen.
"The procedures we're putting in place today are so above industry norms that we are going to be the safest place to eat," Ells promised on NBC's Today Show last week - just one stop on his apology tour that has lead him to an appearance on "Mad Money" with CNBC's Jim Cramer and forced the company to take out full page ads in 61 newspapers across the country.