The family of British ballet dancer who died after suffering a severe allergic reaction to a cookie containing peanuts has sued the ‘deplorable’ supermarket that sold them to her for ‘gross negligence’.
Órla Baxendale, 25, originally from Helmshore, East Lancashire, but based in New York City, went into anaphylactic shock and died on January 11 after consuming vanilla Florentine cookies that contained peanuts.
The cookies, which were purchased from a Stew Leonard’s store in Connecticut, were subsequently recalled due to the packaging not having a peanut allergy warning.
Her family, in a lawsuit filed last Thursday, has now accused the grocer and manufacturer Cookies United of being ‘careless and negligent’ in causing Baxendale’s death.
Both companies are named in the lawsuit, along with several Stew Leonard’s employees.
Baxendale, who had a severe peanut allergy, had moved to New York City from England to pursue a career as a dancer and was in ‘the prime of her life,’ according to the lawsuit filed Thursday at the Superior Court in Waterbury.
The complaint, reviewed by DailyMail.com, states that Baxendale had a known severe peanut allergy and she, ‘like all consumers, relied upon the manufacturer and seller to properly label the package sold to the general public’.
However, the cookies she consumed ‘contained, among other things, undeclared peanuts and other known allergens’, despite not being labelled as so, according to the complaint.
The suit alleges that Cookies United failed to properly label that the Florentine cookies contained peanuts prior to distribution.
According to the suit, eleven Stew Leonard’s employees were ‘notified by email’ of the change in ingredients, including the ‘addition of peanuts to the cookie recipe in July 2023, approximately six months before Baxendale’s death.
The manufacturer then sent ‘bulk packaging’ that contained a label indicating the cookies contained allergens including peanuts in October that year.
However, Baxendale consumed a cookie that had not been properly labelled to indicate the ingredient change in January 2024.
She went into anaphylactic shock and an EpiPen was administered, but ‘due to the severity of her allergy, it was not effective’, family attorney Marijo C. Adime said in a statement at the time.
The suit accuses Stew Leonard’s of ignoring alerts from the manufacturer and alleges the store did not update product labels once it received notice of a change of ingredients.
‘The failure to properly label the package prior to the distribution and sale of the Florentine Cookie(s) was grossly negligent, intentional, reckless, callous, indifferent to human life, and a wanton violation as the manufacturer and seller were required under the law to properly declare the ingredients,’ the lawsuit reads.
It further alleges that the systems that Stew Leonard’s has in place to maintain and update labels are ‘broken, unreliable, inherently dangerous, undependable, untrustworthy, erratic, and deplorable’.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary and punitive damages.
DailyMail.com has approached Stew Leonard’s and Cookies United for comment.
A spokesperson for Stew Leonard’s told The Associated Press on Friday that they could not comment on pending litigation.
The cookies were produced by the Long Island-based wholesaler Cookies United and labeled with the Stew Leonard’s brand name.
They were stores in Danbury and Newington in Connecticut late last year.
Stew Leonard Jr., the retailer’s president and CEO, said statement released in January that the supplier went from soy nuts to peanuts in the recipe without notifying their chief safety officer.
Cookies United had said they notified Stew Leonard’s last July that the product contained peanuts and that all products shipped to the retailer had been labeled accordingly.
The manufacturer, at the time, also claimed the incorrect label had been created by Stew Leonard’s.
Peanuts and eggs are among nine major food allergens identified in federal law that requires such ingredients to be listed on food packaging.