What is Food Poisoning?
Food poisoning or foodborne illness refers to any sort of illness that comes about from contaminated food. Often, the cause of foodborne illnesses comes from bacteria, viruses, toxins, or parasites contained within the food.
Food poisoning will present itself most commonly in symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, but can also include chills, dizziness, fatigue, pain in the abdomen, cramps, headache and more. In more serious cases, you may end up hospitalised because of your food poisoning.
I Think I’ve got Food Poisoning from a Restaurant: What Can I do?
If you have fallen ill after eating at a restaurant, you have some options regarding your next steps. The best thing to start with is to try and determine the source of your infection. If you think that it’s possible that your illness stems from something that you incorrectly prepared yourself, you may just need to be more careful in the future. An example of this could be last night’s leftovers that were in the fridge a little too long, or an undercooked chicken breast.
If you’ve run through your potential sources of food poisoning and feel confident that it came from a restaurant or takeaway place, you should begin recording details of your experience. Track down any others that ate at the restaurant such as friends or family to see if their experience is the same. Keep any photos of the food you have and keep a record of any medical expenses you’ve had. Then, you can contact a public liability lawyer such as the experts at Personal Injury Helpline for more information about claiming compensation.
Food Poisoning Compensation
Under public liability laws in Australia, restaurants that serve contaminated food can be found to be liable to pay damages to those that fall ill from their food. If a restaurant serves you food that fails in the duty of care that they have for their patrons, they may find themselves in some hot water.
How to Prove Food Poisoning from a Restaurant?
In assessing a case of food poisoning, there is a major challenge in proving that the source of your illness or contamination came from a particular restaurant. As you can imagine, timelines are not always crystal clear, and a person will consume multiple things from multiple sources within the space of a single day. This is one of the reasons as to why it can be easier finding the source of infection when there are multiple cases of food poisoning. If the stricken people are related in any way, it can be easier to narrow down the potential source of their infection.
Proving liability in a food poisoning compensation claim requires some careful investigation into both the sick person’s condition and the suspected source of the illness. Analysing body waste and the suspected source of contaminated food will provide more clarity to this point.
In food poisoning compensation cases, most of the difficulty lies in proving that your case is valid. With a team of experts by your side, you can give yourself the best chance at success. Contact Personal Injury Helpline for more information today.
