Man sues Blue Bell for brain damage
A former Houston resident alleges bacterial contamination in Blue Bell ice cream caused him permanent neurological damage that has left the 32-year-old disabled and in his parents’ care.
According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday at a federal district court in Austin, David Shockley ate Blue Bell ice cream in 2013 and was later diagnosed with a debilitating listeria infection.
The Brenham-based creamery recalled all its products in April after 10 cases of listeria, a potentially deadly bacteria, were traced back to its production facilities in Oklahoma and Texas between 2011 and 2014. Three deaths in a Kansas hospital have been attributed to contaminated Blue Bell, but this lawsuit apparently is the first filed against the company over the outbreak.
Officials with Blue Bell said the company could not comment on pending litigation.
Shockley, a Maryland native, contended he ate various Blue Products in 2013 while working as an associate executive director
of a retirement community in Texas. Ryan Osterholm, attorney for Shockley, said his firm verified with Shockley’s coworkers that single-serving institutional Blue Bell ice cream cups — the first Blue Bell products to test positive for listeria — had been served at the workplace.
At that time, Shockley was taking immunosuppressive medication that heightened his vulnerability to illness.
According to the lawsuit: In October 2013, Shockley called 911 for a severe headache. Emergency room personnel diagnosed a migraine and sent Shockley home. Hours later he lost consciousness. Coworkers noticed Shockley’s absence at a work function and could not reach him by phone or email.
They went to his home where they found him unresponsive with a fever of nearly 107 degrees. Shockley then spent six days unconscious with a breathing tube, and awoke unable to walk, talk or swallow. Doctors tested Shockley’s spinal fluids, found Listeria monocytogenes and diagnosed him with listeria meningitis.
After discharge from the hospital, Shockley, unable to work, moved in with his parents in Maryland with permanent brain damage that left him in need of constant care. He is seeking unspecified damages from the creamery for medical treatment, lost income and suffering that resulted from his illness.
The lawsuit alleges Blue Bell ice cream is the only possible source for the listeria bacteria that infected Shockley, but experts said it will be hard to prove beyond doubt.
“There really was no other plausible explanation for how it contracted it,” Osterhold said.
However doctors did not perform genome-sequencing tests on Shockley’s listeria — tests that would have shown conclusively whether his infection descended from bacteria identified in Blue Bell products. Listeria can infect a person without causing symptoms for up to 70 days.
Osterhold said he doesn’t know why the tests never happened.
“A mistake was made,” he said.
Those tests conclusively linked Blue Bell contamination to 10 illnesses in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Texas since 2010. They kicked off after random product testing in South Carolina identified listeria in Blue Bell.
When that news broke, Shockley got the first clue to the source of his debilitating sickness.
“It was like a lightbulb went on,” Osterhold said.
Earlier this month, documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed Blue Bell had been aware of listeria contamination in an Oklahoma facility for more than a year before the company announced a recall.
Thereafter, incremental recalls suggested contamination was relegated to only a few products, but further testing showed otherwise, and all company products were recalled.