Botulism victims prepare class action lawsuit against Kitchen on the District

“Kitchen in the District” has already paid about 3 million rubles in the pre-trial order. The plaintiffs do not agree with the proposed amounts and decided to ask for a higher compensation. The lawyers will send the first claims to courts across Russia in the next two weeks, after the pre-trial phase is over, a representative of the Detralegal legal service told Vedomosti.

• On June 15, the first reports of poisoning and suspected botulism began to appear on Telegram channels. All the victims ordered food “through delivery services.”
• On June 18, the first arrests began in the case of a massive outbreak of botulism in Moscow, and Rospotrebnadzor announced that it had identified the producers of salads poisoned by botulism: LokalKitchen LLC (kitchen service in the district) and Savon-K LLC.
• According to investigators, the defendants, “through prior conspiracy, in violation of safety requirements,” produced at least 2.3 thousand portions of Lobio, which they packed in individual vacuum packages and sold through the Samokat service to an “unlimited circle of people.”
• On June 28, the Lublinsky Court of Moscow suspended the work of the Local Kitchen for 90 days.

According to experts, filing a class action lawsuit involves the same demands and claims against the defendant, as well as a small compensation. In the case of Kitchen on the Neighborhood, the plaintiffs have very different damages and claims, and the chances of satisfaction are also different.

Sofia Volkova, a lawyer at Asterisk law firm, says that in other countries, victims in similar cases receive up to a million dollars. In Russia, the practice is different.

In this case, the amount of compensation will consist of the amount spent on treatment and compensation for moral damage. However, there is still hope for a favorable outcome due to the resonance of the case, he said.