On April 26, 2013, calls started rolling into the the Southern Nevada Health District Office of Epidemiology. Patrons of Firefly restaurant on Paradise Road were sick. Reports from eight groups of diners that day were the first from 294 people who would eventually fall ill in one of the largest Salmonella outbreaks in recent years.
Health officials found Salmonella in samples of chorizo sausage tested, but said that the likely source of the problem was cross contamination in the kitchen.
Almost all of the people who were sickened by the rare outbreak strain Salmonella I:4,5,12:i:-., 290 of them, were customers of the restaurant. They came from 27 states, Canada, and the United Kingdom to try their luck at the table games, but lost it instead when they sat down at a restaurant table.
One of them was a woman from Allegheny County, Pa, who filed a lawsuit. She was on a trip with her husband and ate at Firefly on April 24. She became sick two days later.
According to the complaint, filed on her behalf by PritzkerOlsen, a leading food safety law firm, Firefly and its owners exercised “willful and reckless” disregard for food safety.
The restaurant breached its duty to properly train and supervise workers and other employees; failed to safely produce, store and transport its food products; failed to maintain sanitary conditions during and after food preparation; failed to prevent cross-contamination; failed to implement and supervise a system for assuring safe production and handling of its food products and failed to properly test its products, the complaint read.
Four employees who were also sickened. The Firefly permanently closed the location of the outbreak. It reopened a new location a few months later just down the street.
