Around a dozen Britons, still reeling from their week at a luxury seaside resort where they allegedly suffered severe food poisoning, have taken legal action to sue the resort, which is, however, not the first to complain.
“It is deeply worrying that we are being asked to act year after year. Many of our clients have reported similar and disturbing experiences and patterns that have led to several of them becoming seriously ill,” serious injury lawyer Jatinder Paul told The Independent on Tuesday.
A British law firm has been instructed to represent ten tourists who are jointly suing the five-star Riu Palace Santa Maria resort in Cape Verde, Africa, after they took turns falling seriously ill while on holiday.
One of them, Graham Lamont, 59, had organised a week-long holiday on May 10 with his wife Josephine Black and their two children, to celebrate his 18-year-old daughter Freya going off to university.
However, just a few days after their arrival, the woman began suffering from severe stomach cramps and diarrhea, before the man suffered the same symptoms on May 16, just before he returned home.
A few months later, the 50-year-old is still recovering from food poisoning that caused him to lose more than 15 pounds, he told British media.
“It’s the last thing you want from a five-star holiday, and now you wish you had never been there. We’ve spoken to other people who fell ill at the same time and have heard horrific reports about this hotel since we got home.
Same story with Sarah Tuttle, 44, who was traveling alone with her young daughter, Haley, 9, who contracted shigella, a form of food poisoning caused by consuming contaminated produce, during the same week.
“I had concerns about the food, including the number of animals around and flies on some of the plates. We’ve always avoided them, but there seems to be a lot of food brought back to life, with ribs at lunch being recycled into curries at night.
The problem is that the coastal resort has been the subject of more than 300 such complaints since 2022, according to the law firm.
“From what we see, it does not appear that lessons have been learned from previous outbreaks among clients,” the specialist lawyer told The Independent.
