A 72-year-old retired registered nurse got the stomach-churning surprise of a lifetime when she allegedly discovered the partial remains of a dead mouse in a carton of Pacific Foods soup. Unfortunately for the woman, Maesel Dorn, the discovery was made after she had already had a bowl of the soup that she now claims made her “violently ill for two days.” As a result of her ordeal, she filed a $400,000 lawsuit earlier this week, alleging that when she notified Pacific Foods of her findings, the “organic foods company tried to brush off her complaints.”
A 72-year-old retired registered nurse got the stomach-churning surprise of a lifetime when she allegedly discovered the partial remains of a dead mouse in a carton of Pacific Foods soup. Unfortunately for the woman, Maesel Dorn, the discovery was made after she had already had a bowl of the soup that she now claims made her “violently ill for two days.” As a result of her ordeal, she filed a $400,000 lawsuit earlier this week, alleging that when she notified Pacific Foods of her findings, the “organic foods company tried to brush off her complaints.”
Filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Dorn’s lawsuit details out exactly what happened. Her ordeal began back on January 19 when she ate a bowl of Pacific Foods roasted red pepper and tomato soup. Later that evening, “she suddenly awoke in the middle of the night and made a dash for the toilet and fell violently ill.” According to the suit, she “hallucinated by trying to dial 911 by punching the numbers into her toilet,” and when she tried to return to her bed she was “so weak she had to crawl.”
The following day, she was so ill she couldn’t eat anything. However, the next day, on January 21, her stomach had settled enough for her to eat some more of the Pacific Foods soup she kept in her refrigerator. That’s when she made the grisly discovery. While pouring soup into a cup, “the body parts of what appeared to be a mouse slid into her cup, too.” For proof, she took a photo and said:
“I was just shocked more than anything. I kept looking at it, and I couldn’t believe it…and then, it was just so sickening. I haven’t been able to eat any soup since then.”
Once she got over her initial shock, she called Pacific Foods repeatedly until she “got through to an employee who told her to drop off the carton and what remained inside at the store where she bought it, the Wood Village Fred Meyer.” She was told that an employee of Pacific Foods would pick up the cartoon of tainted soup for testing, according to the lawsuit. However, late last month she was informed by the company that it “hadn’t retrieved the soup container from Fred Meyer” and even claimed that “Dorn hadn’t dropped the container off at the store” and declared the case closed.
Upset about the company’s response, Dorn alleges in her lawsuit that the “soup carton she supplied for testing mysteriously disappeared in a ‘cover-up.’” In response to the allegations and the lawsuit, the Vice President of operations at Pacific Foods, Joe McCarthy, said:
“While we can’t comment on ongoing legal matters, we can say that our utmost priority is ensuring the safety and integrity of our products. We take all consumer complaints seriously and have stringent protocols for investigating concerns.”
Sources:
Mouse guts found in Pacific Foods soup, lawsuit claims
Woman’s $400G lawsuit claims ‘cover-up’ of mouse guts found in soup
Join the conversation!