New York Personal Injury Attorneys BlogUnderstanding the Tragedy of Órla Baxendale and the Allergen Labeling Failures Behind It
When a family loses a daughter to a preventable tragedy, accountability is not optional. It is essential. At Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf, our attorneys are representing the family of Órla Baxendale, a 25-year-old dancer whose life was cut short by a mislabeled cookie that was packaged and sold by Stew Leonard’s. The substitute complaint we filed on October 16, 2025, details systemic failures in the grocery chain’s allergen disclosure and product labelingprocedures — procedures that the complaint describes as “broken, unreliable, inherently dangerous, undependable, untrustworthy, erratic, and deplorable.”
Órla had severe allergies to peanuts. On January 11, 2024, she ate a Vanilla Florentine cookie that was purchased from a Stew Leonard’s store in Connecticut. The cookies’ label did not list peanuts as one of its ingredients. Specifically, the cookies’ “contains” statement did not list peanuts. But the cookies contained peanuts — and Órla suffered a fatal anaphylactic reaction as a result of eating one.
Our substitute complaint outlines how this mislabeling was not an isolated mistake. Instead, it reflects systemic shortfalls in the grocer’s allergen-control and labeling systems.
