Minnesota Woman Sues Chipotle Over Salmonella Sepsis Case

A Minnesota woman who was hospitalized with sepsis after eating a Chipotle burrito bowl has sued the restaurant chain, alleging it served salmonella-contaminated jalapeño peppers that touched off a multistate outbreak.

Kristen Behne filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, seeking more than $75,000 in damages.

According to the complaint, Behne ate a chicken burrito bowl at a Chipotle in Roseville, Minnesota, on June 24. Three days later she fainted, developed a fever that reached 102 degrees and was hospitalized with sepsis. She was discharged June 30 and says she has not fully recovered.

Genetic testing tied her infection to the broader outbreak, the lawsuit says, and the Minnesota Department of Health classified her case as outbreak-associated on July 1.

Public health officials have connected at least 110 illnesses in Minnesota and 212 nationally to the outbreak, which Chipotle has publicly attributed to a single contaminated lot of jalapeño peppers. The CDC reported at least 345 illnesses across 27 states as of Wednesday, including 36 hospitalizations.

"It seems like Minnesota has kind of taken the brunt of this," said Minneapolis attorney Ryan Osterholm, who represents Behne. "We don't know why and it could just be that we're the ones that are discovering them." He said he is hearing from many people hospitalized for several days or longer, believes the case could be one of thousands, and would not be surprised if the outbreak leads to deaths.

The suit argues Chipotle should have anticipated the risk, citing a 2015 salmonella outbreak in Minnesota that sickened 64 people and a 2020 case in which the company paid a $25 million criminal fine after outbreaks sickened more than 1,100 people between 2015 and 2018. "Chipotle told the public it had learned its lesson," the suit states. "But we now know that it did not."

Laurie Schalow, Chipotle's chief of corporate affairs and food safety officer, said the company identified jalapeños from a particular grower in Sinaloa, Mexico, distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors, "proactively removed them" and replaced them with product from different growers. She said the CDC and FDA "do not consider there to be a current ongoing risk from Chipotle restaurants in this outbreak."

Peter Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, said such outbreaks usually begin earlier: "Any type of food-borne illness really begins on the farm level and largely through the water supply."

Osterholm said more suits are likely and that he may seek punitive damages after discovery. "We're in maybe the second or third inning of knowing what happened," he said.