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Town Center restaurant named in lawsuit after claims of foodborne illness

A law firm filed a lawsuit against the Bazille Café located inside Nordstrom in the Town Center, claiming the restaurant served contaminated basil.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A new lawsuit filed in Duval County on Tuesday accuses the St. Johns Town Center-area restaurant, Bazille Café, of making customers sick from the parasite cyclospora. 

The lawsuit claims the food-borne illness came from contaminated basil, similar to lawsuits filed against Cooper's Hawk earlier this year.

RELATED: Lawsuit filed after contaminated basil causes Cyclospora outbreak at Cooper's Hawk

The restaurant is located inside of Nordstrom. The lawsuit claims the restaurant served contaminated basil, which reportedly is linked to at least 241 people getting sick across 11 states. Most cases, at least for the law firm, are out of Jacksonville.

The investigation into cyclospora-contaminated basil leaves started back in July by the FDA. 

Dr. Tony Coveny is an attorney at the national food safety law firm of Ron Simon & Associates. They represented a number of people from the Cooper’s Hawk outbreak as well. 

"The vast majority of victims become very ill and are sick for weeks before doctors realize what they have," Coveny said. 

In their latest case against Bazille, their lawsuit states their client, who is from Ponte Vedra, tested positive for cyclospora after eating at Bazille and became so sick they lost nearly 30 pounds.

"What we have in the United States is strict liability," Coveny said. "What is says is that when a restaurant serves food and makes money off of it the burden should fall on them and not on the innocent person who is buying a meal. Bazille and Norstrom’s, in all honesty, were not culpable in the sense of having known that the food was contaminated."

He says the real blame falls back on the production of the food, which in this case traces back to Morelos, Mexico.

He says people should thoroughly wash all of the produce they buy from grocery stores. 

He says this may serve as a wake-up call to restaurants. 

"Pay attention to where you source your foods," he said. "If it’s coming from outside this country, just assume that some of the safety standards are not being followed and put pressure on the importers to screen the food, test the food. It’s worth doing."

First Coast News reached out to Bazille Café and were told to contact their General Manager on Wednesday for a comment.

Coveny says there could be thousands of people impacted across the country; they only known about certain ones who come forward and make a claim.

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