A Connecticut Superior Court judge has ruled that Stew Leonard Jr. and other employees of his namesake grocery chain cannot be held personally liable for the death of Órla Baxendale, a 25-year-old British ballet dancer who died after eating a mislabeled cookie sold at one of the company's Connecticut stores. The decision, handed down October 15, strikes the individual claims from the lawsuit but leaves the core product-liability case against the company and its cookie supplier very much alive.
Judge Kimberly Massicotte, who sits on the Waterbury Superior Court, found that the individuals cannot be held liable in the ballet dancer's tragedy, according to Allergic Living. Her ruling allows the product liability counts to remain in the lawsuit against Stew Leonard's Holdings, LLC, Stew Leonard's Danbury, LLC, and Cookies United, the outlet reported, while the judge refused to grant the defendants' motion to strike the entire lawsuit. Massicotte wrote that the Connecticut Product Liability Act is the exclusive remedy for all of the plaintiff's wrongful death claims, according to the same report.
Baxendale, who trained at the Ailey School in Manhattan as a scholarship student after moving to New York in 2018 and went on to perform in professional productions including at Lincoln Center, died of peanut-induced anaphylaxis on January 11, 2024. She went into anaphylactic shock after eating a Vanilla Florentine cookie bearing the Stew Leonard's brand at a social gathering in Connecticut, officials said, and received an epinephrine injection before she died that same day, according to her family's attorney, Howard Hershenhorn.
A Label Missing a Deadly Ingredient
The package label on the Vanilla Florentine cookies did not include peanut as an ingredient, according to Allergic Living's report on the case record. That gap sits at the center of the lawsuit Baxendale's estate filed in Connecticut in May 2024, as first reported by Newsday, which alleges negligent failure to properly label the cookie package. The estate's attorneys filed an amended complaint under the Connecticut Product Liability Act in October 2025, naming Stew Leonard's, Cookies United and individual employees.
The parties still dispute how the peanuts ended up in the cookie without appearing on the label. Stew Leonard's has argued that Cookies United changed the recipe from soy nuts to peanuts without notifying the company's chief safety officer, a position USA Today reported in 2024. Cookies United has countered that it notified Stew Leonard's in July 2023 that the product now contained peanuts and that everything shipped afterward was labeled accordingly, per the same USA Today report. Cookies United executives have said they emailed 11 Stew Leonard's employees to flag the change, while Baxendale's lawsuit alleges that Stew Leonard's employees ignored that notice and never updated the label or nutrition panel, a dispute neither USA Today's reporting nor Newsday's resolves.
A Second Dismissal of Individual Liability
A Second Dismissal of Individual Liability Thursday's ruling is not the first time Massicotte has shielded individual Stew Leonard's staff from personal exposure. She first dismissed all claims against individual executives and employees, including Stew Leonard Jr., on September 16, 2025, ruling at the time that the Connecticut Product Liability Act is the only legal remedy available for injuries caused by defective products, as Newsday reported. Allergic Living noted that the October ruling reflects a similar decision from August 2025 that also granted the chain's motion to dismiss wrongful-death counts against individual defendants.
Hershenhorn, the Manhattan attorney representing the Baxendale family, said the ruling would not prevent Stew Leonard's from being held responsible for its reckless behavior. He said the company had no systems in place to ensure product ingredients were listed on labels and no fail-safe systems at the time of Baxendale's death. Attorneys for both Stew Leonard's and Cookies United did not respond to requests for comment, according to Newsday's reporting.
Regulatory Fallout and a 2027 Trial Date
The cookie also drew scrutiny from Connecticut regulators. The state's Department of Consumer Protection, alongside the Department of Public Health, had warned the public that Florentine cookies sold at Stew Leonard's stores in Danbury and Newington contained undeclared peanuts, according to a Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection release. The affected cookies had been sold in Danbury and Newington between November 6 and December 31, 2023, before the recall, USA Today reported.
As part of a settlement tied to that state investigation, Stew Leonard's paid $50,000 to Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection and made a $200,000 donation to a nonprofit focused on food-allergy and anaphylaxis research, prevention and awareness, according to Newsday. The company was also required to designate an internal compliance manager responsible for food safety, training and reporting, establish storewide policies for accurately labeling supplier-provided foods, improve employee training, and hire an independent third-party compliance monitor, the outlet reported.
With the individual defendants now dismissed for the second time, the case moves forward strictly as a product-liability claim against Stew Leonard's Holdings, Stew Leonard's Danbury and Cookies United. The trial is set to begin in May 2027 at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, according to Allergic Living. Stew Leonard's operates stores across the region, including locations in Farmingdale and East Meadow.
