Remember the tragic story of a Fayetteville man who died of a morphine overdose after drinking tea he made from poppy seeds he ordered from Amazon?
Stephen Hacala Jr. was 24 when he died April 3, 2016. His parents, Betty and Stephen Hacala Sr., went to Washington to talk of the dangers of unwashed poppy seed, and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., addressed the issue, according to an April 2018 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Now the Hacalas have filed suit in Washington County Circuit Court, naming Amazon.com Inc. of Seattle and Sincerely Nuts Inc. of New York, which marketed and sold the 5-pound bag of poppy seeds Hacala ordered.
The lawsuit, filed March 18 by attorney Kael Bowling of Friday Eldredge & Clark in Fayetteville, asks for compensatory and punitive damages from Amazon and Sincerely Nuts, saying the two companies should have known that unwashed poppy seeds were potentially dangerous.
The suit said unwashed poppy seeds can be contaminated with morphine and codeine. It said there were no warnings of the dangers from Amazon or Sincerely Nuts.
The suit said Hacala Jr. ordered the poppy seeds from Amazon on March 16, 2016, and received the shipment two days later. He was found dead in his Fayetteville apartment on April 3 with an opened seed bag and a 33-ounce bottle filled with seeds and water.
His parents said Hacala had bouts of insomnia and presumed he ordered the seeds to make tea to help him sleep. An autopsy revealed that Hacala Jr. had died from “morphine intoxication.”
Stephen Erickson, deputy chief medical examiner for the Arkansas State Crime Lab, said cases of morphine intoxication are “rare” but concluded it was “very likely” the cause of Hacala’s death, the suit said. In a peer-reviewed paper written by Erickson and Sam Houston State toxicologist Madeleine Swortwood, the researchers concluded “it is possible to obtain lethal doses of morphine from poppy seed tea if moderate volumes of tea are consumed.”
The suit accuses Amazon and Sincerely Nuts of product liability, negligence and violations of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Sign up for Daily E-news
