Stew Leonards CEO, staff cant be personally sued over NYC professional dancers mislabled cookie death, judge rules

Stew Leonard’s CEO and staff cannot be personally sued over the death of a New York City-based professional ballet dancer who ate a mislabeled holiday cookie containing peanuts.Orla Baxendale’s family and estate cannot hold CEO Stew Leonard Jr.

and other grocery employees individually liable in their wrongful death claims under the Connecticut Product Liability Act (CPLA), Waterbury Superior Court Judge Kimberly Massicotte ruled Oct.15, according to court documents obtained by Allergic Living.However, the product liability claims will still proceed against Stew Leonard’s Holdings LLC, Stew Leonard’s Danbury LLC and Cookies United, a Long Island-based wholesaler that manufactured the cookie.Baxendale, 25, died from anaphylactic shock after suffering an allergic reaction when she ate a vanilla Florentine cookie from a box bearing the Stew Leonard’s brand name at a social gathering in Connecticut on Jan.

11, 2024.An investigation into the young dancer’s death found that the cookie’s packaging did not list peanuts, to which Baxendale was severely allergic.An EpiPen was used in an attempt to save her life, “but due to the severity of her allergy, it was not effective,” an attorney representing her estate previously said.Baxendale, a native of Manchester, England, moved to New York in 2018 to train as a scholarship student at The Ailey School.Before her death, she had worked with various choreographers and appeared in numerous professional productions, including at New York Fashion Week and at Lincoln Center.Following her death, Baxendale’s estate and family filed a sweeping wrongful death lawsuit, accusing the defendants of negligence for failing to properly label the package.Stew Leonard’s has maintained that Cookies United swapped soy nuts for peanuts in the cookie recipe without alerting the chain’s chief safety officer.Cookies United, however, has said it gave Stew Leonard’s notice of the change in July 2023, emailing several of the groce...