Daily Harvest Customers Endured Gallbladder Removal and $20K in Hospital Bills. Now They’re Planning to Sue

Daily Harvest is facing potential legal action after its now-recalled French Lentil + Leek Crumbles allegedly made droves of customers severely ill—some of whom claim to have had their gallbladder removed, incurred around $20,000 in medical expenses, and lost income while recovering at home. One lawyer representing customers told Bon Appétit he’s planning to file multiple lawsuits in the next week against the celebrity- and influencer-backed frozen food company.

In a new statement made Thursday evening, Daily Harvest reported that approximately 28,000 units of the product had been distributed since April 28, and the company has since received approximately 470 reports of illness or adverse reactions. The brand is also “working closely with the FDA and with multiple independent labs to investigate this,” according to their latest Instagram post. But irate commenters are unsatisfied with the response, calling for hospital bills to be reimbursed and claiming that the announcement has come too late to prevent widespread harm.

So what’s next for both Daily Harvest and its affected customers? What should you do if you’ve experienced symptoms after eating the lentil crumbles, according to lawyers? Here’s everything you need to know about the situation.

Jump ahead:

• What illnesses have customers been experiencing?
• What has Daily Harvest's response been?
• What’s causing the illness?
• What’s happening next? What kind of legal action is being taken?
• If you’ve eaten the lentil product, what should you do now?

Nearly 100 people have sought advice from Jeffery Bowersox, a product safety lawyer and the founder of Bowersox Law Firm in Oregon about health issues after eating food from Daily Harvest. Though complaints vary in nature, most had symptoms that “have uniformly involved severe abdominal distress, often accompanied by violent vomiting, fatigue, and needing to lay down in a fetal position,” Bowersox tells Bon Appétit. Many who’ve recently sought Bowersox’s legal advice have also had to go to the emergency room for medical treatment because of symptoms like elevated bilirubin (an orange-yellow pigment that occurs when red blood cells break down, sometimes indicating jaundice, anemia, or liver disease), elevated liver enzymes, itching, and other liver illness-related symptoms.

Of those Bowersox has heard from, he estimates that “approximately 10% had emergency surgery to remove their gallbladder.”

Luke Pearson, a 30-year-old content creator from Portland, Oregon, is one of those who underwent gallbladder surgery. (He is currently being represented by Bowersox.) In late May and early June, Pearson ate the lentil crumbles on two separate occasions—which he was sent in a promotional press mailer—and experienced severe stomachaches, fevers, and chills after each. Two days after the second instance, on June 8, he went to the doctor’s office with the “worst bilateral lower back pain” of his life, Pearson tells Bon Appétit.

“I noticed that I had very dark urine and the bottoms of my feet and hands were extremely itchy,” he says. He doesn’t drink alcohol, but Pearson’s liver enzymes were in the 400 to 700s range. (Enzyme levels beyond 400 can be indicative of hepatocellular disease, among other serious illnesses.)

After days of testing as well as the onset of jaundice, on June 12, surgeons removed Pearson’s gallbladder. “They believed I might have had a gallstone that blocked a duct, causing my liver enzymes to spike, and that I must have already passed it naturally,” he explains. “Ultimately, there was never any evidence of this but out of precaution and with the information they had, they recommended taking my gallbladder out to alleviate symptoms.” Since the surgery, Pearson says he’s “not feeling 100%” yet and his doctors are monitoring his liver enzymes, which were still not within normal range this week.

Pearson is still awaiting medical bills, but Bowersox expects any patients who underwent surgery—pending insurance arrangements—will owe tens of thousands of dollars.

Jenna D’argenzio, a 32-year-old influencer and jewelry maker from Los Angeles, estimates her out-of-pocket medical expenses have totaled about $20,000 for illness that she alleges started after she ate the lentil crumbles. After trying her press samples back in May, she experienced “excruciating stomach pain, could not eat for days, and was bed ridden for about a week,” D’argenzio tells Bon Appétit. Her husband, who also ate the lentils, “had very elevated liver enzymes, dark urine, and stomach pain,” she says. Both also lost a week’s worth of income while they were ill and recovering at home.

After allegations started mid-last week, around Wednesday, June 15, Daily Harvest emailed some customers and press contacts on Friday, June 17—though both D’argenzio and Pearson say they weren’t included in that blast. (In their latest statement, Daily Harvest said they “directly notified by email those consumers who were shipped the affected product.”) The company promoted the Walnut + Thyme Crumbles in a since-deleted Instagram post that also directed customers to a link in its bio, which led to a webpage explaining that the company was looking into the reports about the French Lentil + Leek Crumbles.

On Wednesday night, it shared an Instagram post addressing the situation: “We are doing everything we can, as quickly as we can to identify the root cause.” The message angered many of Daily Harvest’s followers, who claimed in the comments that the company’s response was too lackluster—and too late to prevent harm. Daily Harvest responded to requests for comment with the brand’s latest statement.

Sarah Schacht, a 42-year-old food safety advocate, is frustrated that Daily Harvest continued to advertise discounts on memberships without confirming this issue is isolated to the crumbles. (In their latest statement, the company said no other products are affected.) She’s been suffering from “violent” digestive issues on and off for six weeks, and she canceled her Daily Harvest subscription after finally connecting her symptoms with a cause when droves of others came forward over this past week.

“I feel like I’ve been targeted with more Daily Harvest ads in the last 72 hours than I have in the last six months,” she says. “It just feels insensitive to continue promoting their product line when so many consumers are calling out for them to recall all their products—not just the crumbles.”

Caroline Sweet, a 37-year-old actor living in Los Angeles, has been experiencing “intense upper stomach cramps and pain,” fevers, dark urine, high liver enzyme levels, and extreme fatigue since June 14, she tells Bon Appétit. She believes it’s tied to eating the lentils. She’s understanding about the incident, but not Daily Harvest’s actions.

Sweet received an email from the brand addressing the illness allegations on June 17, while she was actively in the ER. The message, she says, sought to “minimize” customer experiences, implied the issue was a user error for not cooking the lentils long enough, instructed them to discard the product, and offered a $10 credit. “It’s not the fact that it happened,” she says, “it’s how they’ve handled it that makes me incensed.”

At Daily Harvest we are committed to our customers, and we take quality and safety seriously. Our technology enables us to take extraordinary and timely precautions that go well beyond standard practice. A small number of customers have reported gastrointestinal discomfort after consuming our French Lentil + Leek Crumbles. As included in our cooking instructions, lentils must be thoroughly cooked to an internal temperature of 165℉. Like some other legumes, raw lentils contain a type of protein that can cause gastrointestinal symptoms unless thoroughly cooked.

While cooking lentils thoroughly is always recommended, out of an abundance of caution, please dispose of any French Lentil + Leek Crumbles you have received and do not eat them. You are a valued customer and we deeply appreciate your trust in us. It is one of our core values to go above and beyond for our customers, which goes hand in hand with our culture of continuous improvement. For the trouble, we have placed a $10 credit in your account for every bag of French Lentil + Leek Crumbles in your last box.

Thank you for being a loyal customer.

The cause is still unclear. Daily Harvest is running various tests in tandem with the FDA, and their early results have ruled out easily-identifiable biological pathogens, such as salmonella or E. coli. Firms like Bowersox Law and Marler Clark LLP PS, in Seattle, Washington, are also independently running tests. Marler Clark received over 30 inbound requests related to Daily Harvest as of Thursday, according to attorney and foodborne illness lawyer William Marler.

Many people online have started speculating what the cause might be. However, no official FDA comments have been made, and identifying the cause of foodborne illness is also famously challenging. In some cases, even with many reports directed at one restaurant, the results of testing can be inconclusive.

Marler stresses that it’s too early to tell if or how Daily Harvest might have messed up. “We need to figure out what is sickening people” first, he says.

Bowersox is planning to file his first lawsuit by the end of day Friday. He expects to file five to 10 more from various districts around the country next week.

These allegations will be about an indeterminate product liability, which implies “there’s something wrong with the product, but we haven’t yet identified it,” Bowersox says. In personal injury cases like this, where symptoms and experiences are varied, he says there won’t be a class action. He thinks a consolidated court action, known as a multi-district litigation (MDL), is likely. In this scenario, all cases against Daily Harvest would be tried individually, Bowersox says, with the goal to seek a settlement and medical and personal injury compensation for each customer who was affected by the product.

Bowersox believes “it will be demonstrated that surgery was not medically necessary for some of the patients.” However, because there was no other explanation for their illnesses, surgeons went forward with procedures anyway.

The crux of Bowersox’s argument is that the company failed to “widely and explicitly” tell its customers that many people reported symptoms, and as a result, people went to the hospital without context to offer to their doctors, he says. And, since neither the customer nor the physician had identified Daily Harvest as the potential cause, “doctors followed a standard differential diagnosis and determined that the patient had a gallbladder problem,” Bowersox alleges.

Though cases are expected to be filed shortly, Bowersox says any kind of settlement could take years to resolve. “Scientific proof” that links Daily Harvest to the symptoms is necessary to prove a foodborne illness claim to a degree that a court will accept, says Marler. Bowersox adds that it’s the “plaintiff’s obligation under the law to prove the product is defective.” Both are hopeful that testing will discover the cause of their clients’ illnesses, but anecdotal and circumstantial evidence alone will likely not suffice in this kind of a case. “By its nature, it requires some scientific explanation,” says Bowersox.

First, if you’re experiencing any abdominal discomfort, “get medical treatment,” says Marler. Despite Daily Harvest instructing consumers to ditch the lentil crumbles, Bowersox urges people to keep them. He recommends sealing the food in a leakproof container and freezing it until it can be analyzed, as it can be used as evidence in any lawsuit.

Schacht, the food safety advocate who has suffered foodborne illnesses before, recommends anyone who’s been impacted by the lentil crumbles to lodge a complaint with the FDA. “It’s important to report so the scope of the outbreak is known,” she says. The source can’t be found “unless those impacted raise their hands and food safety investigators can backtrack what happened.”