A lifelong lover of liverwurst, Sue Fleming relished the smoked sausage her husband brought home every few weeks from the grocery store deli. Patrick Fleming always made sure to buy braunschweiger, the type she liked best, even though it could be costlier than other brands. “My whole family loves braunschweiger," Sue Fleming said.
"On bread with lettuce, a little mayo, a slice of pickle.” But the 88-year-old from High Ridge, Missouri, is rethinking her favorite snack after she fell ill as part of a deadly linked to a nationwide recall of of Boar’s Head deli meats. The retired psychotherapist and author said she spent nine days in a hospital and 11 in a rehabilitation center last month because of what doctors confirmed was a listeria infection.
She and her husband are suing Boar’s Head and Schnuck Markets Inc., which sold the deli meat, according to court documents filed July 26 in a Missouri court. As of early August, — one in New Jersey, one in Illinois and one in Virginia.
“We wanted no one else to be harmed,” Fleming said in an interview. Boar’s Head also faces a class action lawsuit filed Aug. 1 in federal court in New York.
Rita Torres of Queens County alleges that the company improperly and deceptively marketed its products and that she would not have purchased it if the company had warned that it was contaminated with listeria. Health officials in Maryland and New York detected listeria in unopened Boar’s Head liverwurst products and later confirmed i.