The second lawsuit in the 2026 outbreak — and the first to name lettuce supplier Taylor Farms — is filed for an Ohio woman sickened after eating at Taco Bell, as state case counts climb past 8,000 while the government confirms only 1,644.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash., July 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Marler Clark, Inc., PS, The Food Safety Law Firm, together with Alexander Darr of Darr Law LLC, has filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, against Taco Bell Corporation, Taylor Fresh Foods, Inc., and Taylor Farms California, Inc., on behalf of Valerie Caruso of Geneva, Ohio. The case, Caruso v. Taco Bell Corporation, et al., is the second lawsuit the firm has filed in the 2026 multistate Cyclospora outbreak — and the first to name Taylor Farms, the supplier of the shredded iceberg lettuce that federal investigators have tied to the outbreak, as a defendant.

Ms. Caruso ate at the Taco Bell in Austinburg, Ohio, three times in June 2026 — on June 3, June 15, and June 24 — and each meal contained fresh iceberg lettuce. She maintains a very limited diet, and those meals were among her only exposures to fresh produce during the period when her infection would have taken hold. She began experiencing symptoms on or about June 24, and a stool sample collected July 2 tested positive for Cyclospora on July 7. Because Ms. Caruso is allergic to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim) — the standard treatment for cyclosporiasis — she could not take the recommended medication and remains on an alternative course of treatment. Her recovery is ongoing. The Ashtabula County Health Department contacted her on July 10 as part of its investigation of the outbreak.

The suit follows the July 16 FDA and CDC advisory tying the outbreak to shredded iceberg lettuce from Mexico served at Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia. The FDA said its traceback converged on a single lettuce supplier but declined to name it; press reports and this lawsuit identify that supplier as Taylor Farms. The government’s confirmed outbreak count stands at 1,644, with 94 hospitalizations — even as state health departments report more than 8,000 illnesses, Michigan alone over 5,000. That gap is the difference between the cases the government can lab-confirm and the thousands more that are real but uncounted.

Twenty Years of Taco Bell and Taylor Farms Outbreaks, in the Government’s Own Words

Neither company is new to this. Over the last twenty years both have been tied to outbreak after outbreak, a striking number of them running through the same ingredient: lettuce. The record below is drawn from the government’s own outbreak reports — including the ones where investigators documented the outbreak but declined to print the company’s name, calling it only “Restaurant Chain A” or “a single supplier,” and one deadly 2024 romaine outbreak they closed without naming anyone at all.

Taco Bell

Taylor Farms

Sixteen years separate the first outbreak on this list from the one making people sick today. The label on the produce keeps changing — from “Restaurant Chain A” to “a single supplier” — but the people on the other end of it keep getting sick.

“For ten weeks the government could not bring itself to say the words ‘Taco Bell’ and ‘Taylor Farms.’ Both names are on this complaint,” said William “Bill” Marler, managing partner of Marler Clark. “And neither is new to this. Twenty years of outbreaks run through these same two companies and the same shredded lettuce. Valerie Caruso stands in for thousands of people the official count still refuses to fully acknowledge — and this is the second case, not the last.”

About Marler Clark

Marler Clark, Inc., PS, The Food Safety Law Firm, is the nation’s leading law firm representing victims of foodborne illness. For more than three decades its lawyers have represented thousands of people sickened in outbreaks involving E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Cyclospora, and other pathogens. Firm founder William “Bill” Marler began his food-safety career representing Brianne Kiner, the most seriously injured survivor of the 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, and founded Food Safety News in 2009.

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SOURCE Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm