A Tigard family has filed a lawsuit seeking $950,220.85 from the Tigard-Tualatin School District after their sixth-grade son ate a pretzel coated in crushed oven cleaner during lunch at Fowler Middle School in October 2025. The complaint, filed Sept. 9 in Washington County Circuit Court, alleges the student, identified as L.L. in court filings, suffered burning in his mouth and throat, chest pain, stomach upset and lingering anxiety about eating at school.
The lawsuit names the Tigard-Tualatin School District, the lead kitchen worker who applied the cleaner to the pretzels, and Principal Cindy Pellicci as defendants, according to KPTV. On Oct. 20, 2025, about 37 pretzels were seasoned with crushed Alto-Shaam concentrated oven cleaner, which contains sodium hydroxide, and more than 50 students ate all or part of one during sixth-grade lunch, per the outlet's reporting. A separate KPTV account of the district's records described the same contamination, noting that the powder had been mistaken for salt and that the tablet had reportedly been left near an oven over the weekend before being crushed and mistakenly applied during Monday lunch preparation, according to a separate KPTV report.
Student Allegedly Isolated and Denied a Phone Call
The lawsuit alleges that after L.L. reported symptoms, school staff kept him in a room for roughly an hour, examined and monitored him, and did not tell his parents, while also denying his requests to call home. Staff then sent him back to class after saying he was asymptomatic, the complaint alleges. L.L.'s mother said per the lawsuit that he came home with a sore throat and stomach pain.
According to the complaint, poison control was contacted at 11:03 a.m., about 27 minutes after staff realized what had happened, and the district's first email notifying families went out nearly two hours after students ate the pretzels. The lawsuit argues the family was cut out of medical decisions and that the student was exposed to a known danger. The district has said it was working to ensure families are reimbursed for medical costs tied to the incident, according to NBC News, and that the Oregon Poison Center was contacted immediately after the contamination was discovered.
Substitute Worker Says She Tasted the Seasoning and Felt a Burn
According to the lawsuit, a substitute kitchen worker named Chloe Larson tasted the seasoning, felt a burn, and located the discarded packet, prompting the kitchen lead to flip it over, revealing the oven cleaner label. The complaint states the kitchen lead had described the packet to administrators as soap. The lawsuit alleges the district interviewed seven staff members but did not interview Larson, even though police separately interviewed her after she contacted them with her concerns, a claim that had previously been reported by Fox 12.
The kitchen lead reportedly told police the salt had gotten “cakey,” though the lawsuit says she later gave a different account, claiming she had crushed the cleaner for a steamer and left it out while in a rush. Police closed their investigation the same day they spoke with the kitchen lead by phone, saying they had no kitchen photos or video and could not establish probable cause. Tigard police closed the case months before the lawsuit was filed, and no criminal charges were ever filed.
District Called It Human Error, Kept Worker Employed
The Tigard-Tualatin School District has confirmed the kitchen lead named in the complaint still works in the district and has characterized the contamination as unintentional human error following an outside attorney's inquiry. The district's report concluded seven staff members were interviewed and that Washington County Health and Human Services found no sanitation violations, per the earlier KPTV records report. The district said it had no reports of student hospitalizations, and it has outlined corrective steps including retraining staff on chemical storage and labeling, separating cleaning products from food-preparation areas, and auditing kitchen practices districtwide.
The district has said it cannot comment on pending litigation. Attorney Barrett Mersereau has appeared for the defendants but had not filed a substantive answer as of Friday. The complaint brings seven claims in total, including strict liability, negligence, unlawful confinement and three federal civil-rights violations. Legal experts cited in the lawsuit's reporting say the civil-rights claims face a high bar, since arguments that conduct “shocks the conscience” and Monell policy-or-custom theories against a school district are notoriously difficult to prove in court. No court has ruled on any of the lawsuit's allegations.
Oregon Law and Broader Context
Under Oregon law, public bodies are generally subject to civil suits for torts committed by employees acting within the scope of their duties, subject to statutory limitations, according to the Oregon Legislature. That statute is a general rule and does not by itself determine the outcome of this particular case. Oregon's own school food-safety guidance instructs kitchens to discard any food contaminated by chemicals and to properly label or store unlabeled materials, per the Oregon Department of Education's guidance.
The Fowler Middle School case is not the only instance nationally of cleaning chemicals ending up in food meant for students. A former New Jersey school custodian pleaded guilty to contaminating food meant for students and staff with bodily fluids and cleaning products between Oct. 26 and Oct. 30, 2023, according to NBC Philadelphia. In that case, school officials said all food and utensils were sanitized and any potentially contaminated items were discarded. The Tigard lawsuit remains pending, and the dossier of court filings reviewed by KPTV does not show whether it has been answered, settled or resolved.
