Woman Sues Chopt After Allegedly Finding Part of a Finger in Her Salad

The woman says she was left with several injuries, including emotional distress.

A Connecticut woman has filed a lawsuit against the Chopt Creative Salad Co. restaurant chain, alleging that she bit into a severed slice of an employee’s finger while eating a salad earlier this year.

The plaintiff, Allison Cozzi, bought a salad at the Chopt in Mount Kisco, New York, in April and, according to her legal filing, she was working her way through her meal when she realized that “she was chewing on a portion of a human finger that had been mixed in to, and made a part of, the salad.”

Cozzi’s lawsuit states that one of the restaurant’s managers had sliced off a part of her left index finger while chopping arugula, the Associated Press reported. The manager went to the hospital for treatment, but that portion of arugula — and allegedly that piece of her finger — was still served in the restaurant’s salads. Chopt was later fined $900 by the Westchester County Health Department for “violating state rules aimed at preventing imminent health hazards,” according to NBC News.

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In her lawsuit, Cozzi alleges that the incident left her with several injuries, including cognitive impairment, dizziness, migraine headaches, nausea, panic attacks, and shock, as well as recurring neck and shoulder pain. She is seeking monetary damages from Chopt and its parent company, Founders Table Restaurant Group, although the amount is not specified in her legal filing.

"As a matter of common sense and public interest, the failure to supervise the preparation and service of food in a manner that protects the public is a blatant deviation from accepted safe practice and deserves significant compensation," her attorney Marc Reibman said in a statement.

This isn't the first time a restaurant customer has allegedly found a body part in their meal. In 2005, an Ohio man sued Arby's for $50,000 after finding a slice of skin in the lettuce that topped his chicken sandwich. David Scheiding said that he "got sick" after he bit into the piece of skin, which measured almost three-fourths of an inch.

NBC News reported that Miami County (Ohio) health inspectors spoke to the restaurant manager, who acknowledged that he'd cut his thumb while shredding lettuce. However, the part of the kitchen where he'd been working was thoroughly cleaned and sanitized, the lettuce he'd shredded was not discarded.

That same year, Las Vegas resident Anna Ayala alleged that she found a severed human finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili. She filed a lawsuit against the Ohio-based chain but later admitted that her husband, Jaime Plascencia, had obtained the finger from a coworker who had lost it in an accident at his workplace. (Ayala admitted that she cooked the finger at her home and placed it in the chili herself.)

In 2006, Alalya and Plascencia were sentenced to nine years in prison for their part in the fraud. "I owe Wendy's and its employees an apology," Ayala said at the time of her sentencing. "Wendy's had always been my family's favorite fast food restaurant."

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