Aaron Bissinger, Et Al v. New Country Buffett, Et Al.

A man who suffered a blood infection after eating raw summer oysters at a Nashville restaurant filed suit against the restaurant, claiming that the oysters were contaminated because they were kept at an improper temperature. The restaurant owner answered, and among other things he named three companies in the supply chain that furnished the oysters to the defendant restaurant as possibly liable under the doctrine of comparative fault. The plaintiff subsequently died, and his executor was substituted as plaintiff. The executor filed an amended complaint that added the suppliers as defendants, and included claims against all the defendants of negligence, negligence per se, product liability, and breach of warranty. All the parties filed motions for summary judgment. The trial court denied the defendant restaurant’s motion for summary judgment, but it granted summary judgment to the defendant suppliers on all issues except failure to warn. After studying the voluminous record in this case, we affirm all the trial court’s rulings on the summary motions against the restaurant. We affirm the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the suppliers, and reverse the denial of summary judgment to them for failure to warn.