— OPINION —
In food safety litigation, one of the most consequential, and often most contested, questions is not whether a product was contaminated, or even whether someone was harmed. It is whether the court has the power to hold the right defendants accountable in the first place. That question, always important, has taken on new urgency in light of a Salmonella outbreak linked to a greens-style dietary supplement that has now sickened at least 119 people across 36 states. As that litigation unfolds, a 2023 decision from the Southern District of New York — Albright v. Daily Harvest, Inc., No. 22cv5987, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 151783 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 25, 2023) — has emerged as a significant and directly relevant precedent for how courts approach supply chain accountability in food safety cases.
Background: The Daily Harvest outbreak
Readers of Food Safety News will remember the 2022 Daily Harvest outbreak. Daily Harvest, a subscription-based health food company with its principal place of business in New York, sold a product called French Lentil + Leek Crumbles that was linked to serious liver injuries in consumers — elevated liver enzymes, jaundice, and in some cases surgical intervention. The culprit ingredient was tara flour, produced by a Peruvian corporation called Molinos Asociados SAC.
The supply chain was layered: Molinos sold its tara flour to a U.S.-based distributor, which supplied it to a Minnesota contract manufacturer, which incorporated it into the finished product for Daily Harvest. When plaintiffs brought suit in the Southern District of New York — the logical forum, given Daily Harvest’s New York headquarters — Molinos moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. It argued that it was a Peruvian company that had never entered New York, maintained no office or facility there, and had no direct contractual relationship with any New York entity.
District Judge Denise Cote denied the motion in August 2023. My firm, Marler Clark, represented the majority of the plaintiffs in the class action litigation and successfully opposed the motion. Judge Cote’s opinion merits careful study.
What the Court Found
Judge Cote’s analysis centered on New York’s long-arm statute, CPLR § 302(a)(1), which permits a New York court to exercise personal jurisdiction over any non-domiciliary that “transacts any business within the state or contracts anywhere to supply goods or services in the state.” The statute is a “single act” statute; even one transaction with sufficient New York connections can be enough, even if the defendant never physically entered New York.
The critical facts were these. Molinos’s purchase order from the U.S. distributor explicitly required that the tara flour match Daily Harvest’s specifications —meaning Molinos understood precisely whose product requirements governed its manufacturing. The logistics documentation identified New York-based entities as