Health Watch Exclusive: Lawsuit Says Restaurant Sickened 100
By Stephanie Stahl
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Health department inspections of restaurants are supposed to ensure food safety, but a CBS 3 investigation finds that might not always work, as Health Reporter Stephanie Stahl shows us in this exclusive report.
Celebrating the Chinese New Year with a banquet, where else but inside a venerable Chinatown restaurant? But what a group of 250 lawyers didn't know is that Joy Tsin Lau has a long history of health code violations, a record the manager didn't want to talk about when we approached him.
"No, no, no, don't," he said as he put his hand in front of our camera lens.
Sammy Green was among an estimated 100 lawyers who say they got sick after the February 27 banquet.
"It was easily the worst couple days of my life," Sammy said. "It was vomiting, diarrhea, cramping. It was everything."
It got so bad, she went to a hospital where she was treated for food poisoning.
The Philadelphia Health Department confirms there was a norovirus linked to the outbreak that sickened the lawyers. Experts say norovirus can easily spread from person to person, and it's also the leading cause of food poisoning.
"It's actually not a surprise something like this happened," said Richard Kim, a lawyer representing Sammy in a lawsuit against the restaurant.
The lawsuit cites a long history of failed health inspections. CBS 3 found well over 250 health code violations over 6 years.
A health department inspection February 10, two weeks before the banquet, found serious violations, including a lack of soap in the employee bathroom and inaccessible handwashing sinks.
"It's just continuous and repeated egregious behavior," Kim said.
And one week after the banquet, March 2, another inspection found 41 violations.
Once Sammy found this restaurant had a long history of violations with the health department, what did she think?
"It's outrageous," Sammy said. "I just don't understand how it's still open."
Over the years it has temporarily closed more than once, the city at one point calling Joy Tsin Lau a "serious and immediate hazard," "a public health nuisance."
And while the restaurant apparently cleaned things up enough to reopen, problems continue. In July, the most recently available inspection found continued violations.
When we asked the manager about the health code violations, he said, "Just talk to our lawyer. I don't have anything to say."
Their lawyer declined to comment, but in court documents responding to Sammy's lawsuit, the restaurant says the allegations are "outrageous and baseless" and that its "conduct was not intentional, willful [...] or reckless."
"I am starting this lawsuit because I want to stop this from happening in the future," Sammy said.
The city health department has a court action pending against the restaurant, trying to push them to fix the violations.
"Most people when you go out to eat at a restaurant you don't check the health code violations," Sammy said. "You just have to hope that it's clean and that you won't get sick eating there."
The health department refused comment, citing pending litigation. The restaurant has to answer the city's complaint in front of a judge October 1.
To check Philadelphia restaurant health inspection reports, go to
http://www.phila.gov/health/foodprotection/FoodSafetyReports.html