Zaragoza and Sanchez v. Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc. and Taylor Farms California, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-10148, filed today in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, a state that now counts 1,437 illnesses of its own.
CHICAGO — August 21, 2026 — Alonso Zaragoza and Jadhira Sanchez, husband and wife, of Chicago, sued Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc. and Taylor Farms California, Inc. today, alleging that the shredded iceberg lettuce those companies grew, processed and distributed carried Cyclospora cayetanensis. It is the first lawsuit of the 2026 outbreak filed in Illinois. The complaint pleads ten counts — strict product liability, breach of express and implied warranty, negligence, and loss of consortium against each company — and demands a jury. Plaintiffs are represented by Gary A. Newland and Erin A. Adamski of Newland & Newland LLP in Arlington Heights and by William Marler of Marler Clark, pro hac vice pending.
On Saturday, July 11, Mr. Zaragoza bought a Chalupa Supreme box meal at the Taco Bell at 5312 West Belmont Avenue, ordering through the Taco Bell application, so the purchase sits in his payment records rather than his memory. It contained fresh shredded iceberg lettuce. He was up all the next night, worked Monday until he could not stand, and by that evening the diarrhea had turned bloody.
On July 15 he went to the emergency department at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for intravenous fluids and was discharged the next afternoon. CDC had issued its national Health Alert Network advisory the day before he walked in. FDA announced its investigation of shredded iceberg lettuce served at Taco Bell the day he was discharged, and named Taylor Farms de Mexico the day after. Nobody tested him for the parasite until a third clinic on July 26. The result came back August 4, twenty-three days after his first symptom.
Alonso Zaragoza did everything a person is supposed to do. He worked until he could not stand up, went to an emergency room, went back for care twice more, and it was still August 4 before anybody could tell him what he had. He is one confirmed illness in the federal count, and a good explanation of why that count is a floor.
Ms. Sanchez brings her own claims for loss of consortium. She did not sleep for the first five days, replaced the household’s meals for a nearly liquid diet, and drove her husband to the emergency department and stayed the night. This illness does not stop at the person who ate the meal.
The complaint names no restaurant, no franchisee and no Taco Bell entity, only the two Taylor companies. Nobody in a kitchen on West Belmont Avenue put a parasite on that lettuce. Cyclospora comes from human sewage getting into water, and it gets onto a leaf in a field weeks before anyone shreds it or serves it. There is no kill step that removes it, and the routine ova and parasite examination misses it unless a doctor asks for it by name. The complaint pleads the lettuce was adulterated under the Illinois Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
FDA and CDC both updated yesterday: 10,930 illnesses in seventeen states, at least 454 hospitalizations and two deaths. Illinois is one of the seventeen and one of the thirty-one states FDA confirms received the lettuce. The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 1,437 confirmed and probable cases and 69 hospitalizations Tuesday. The fifty-state tally I keep stood at 31,521 Wednesday and is higher tonight.
Marler Clark represents more than four hundred people in twenty states in this outbreak and expects to file more cases.
Three things would make the next outbreak smaller, and none needs a new statute. Put the food traceability rule back on a calendar somebody has to keep. Grant the Stop Foodborne Illness petition and name companies when the government knows the name. And go look at the water in that growing region, because FDA’s own 2013 environmental assessment asked whether Cyclospora is a hazard there, and nobody has answered.
About Marler Clark
Marler Clark is The Food Safety Law Firm. William Marler has represented more than ten thousand people since 1993, when he represented the most seriously injured survivor of the Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, and has recovered over $850 million. He publishes Marler Blog, founded Food Safety News, and teaches at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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