Almost a year after Tigard-Taulatin School District staff allegedly accidentally served students pretzels dusted with chemical cleaner instead of salt, the parents of one sickened child are suing for nearly $1 million.
The suit, filed last month on behalf of a student identified only by the initials “K.H.” demands that the school pay up to $950,220.85 for the Oct. 20, 2025, incident at Fowler Middle School, court records say.
In addition to the school district, the lawsuit also names the school’s lead cook, Joyce A. Webb, and Principal Cindy Pellicci as co-defendants.
At the time of the alleged poisoning incident last year, the school district said in an email to parents that the pretzels were dusted with Alto Shaam, an oven-cleaning agent sold in tablet form.
But instead of being safely stored away from food and used to clean the school’s ovens, the lawsuit alleges that the tablets were crushed and dusted onto the pretzels in lieu of salt.
The crushed tablets — which contained lye and other caustic ingredients — immediately burned the then-sixth grade plaintiff’s throat, mouth and GI tract, the lawsuit’s complaint alleges.
The complaint adds that in addition to the pain the child experienced on the day of the incident, the boy also experienced emotional distress, fear, isolation, loss of trust in the school’s staff and “ongoing psychological impacts,” as a result of the incident.
The school district later announced that staff served 37 poisoned pretzels, and the lawsuit claims that roughly 50 children ate them just after 10:30 a.m. that day.
After realizing what had happened, school staff called poison control around 11 a.m. but didn’t send out a notice to parents until just before 11:45 a.m., court records allege.
Around noon, the parent of the child described in the lawsuit called the school and asked if the sixth grader had been poisoned, but staff told them that “families of affected students would be contacted sometime in the future,” court records allege.
The child’s parents would later learn that their son had been “sequestered” in a room from 10:45 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., and was experiencing stomach pain, illness and other symptoms during that time, the complaint alleges.
Despite this, the school told the parents that the child wasn’t experiencing symptoms and ultimately sent him back to class, court records allege.
It was only when the boy’s parents came home after school that day that his parents learned of his symptoms, which contradicted the email they’d received from the school, the suit says.
As police investigated the incident, they learned from other staff that head cook Webb “initially did not appear to want to inform students to stop eating the pretzels,” and when a substitute staff member tasted one herself she was hit with an immediate burning sensation in her mouth and throat, court records allege.
When police spoke with Webb, she told investigators that she was in a rush and accidentally put the crushed tablets on the pretzels instead of salt, and that she had crushed them in preparation for cleaning the school’s commercial steamer, court records allege.
The oven cleaner’s usage instructions specifically advise to not crush the tablets, and to only use them as directed in ovens, court records say.
Barrett Mersereau, the attorney for all of the defendants in the case, did not immediately respond to the Oregonian/OregonLive request for comment.
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