Rats! A Zara shopper from New York found a rodent sewn into her dress. While shopping at the Spanish clothier’s Greenwich, Connecticut location this past July, Cailey Fiesel couldn’t stand the smell reeking from the dress she wore to work.
It turns out, one of the two dresses she purchased had a rat sewn into the hem. The dead creature’s legs were poking from the seams. She filed a lawsuit for unspecified damages in Manhattan Supreme Court saying the dress caused her both personal injury and emotional distress.
The claim reads in part:
“While at work, she started to notice a disturbingly pungent odor and was unable to identify the source.
“Despite getting up from her desk and walking around, she was unable to escape this odor. …felt like a loose string from her dress rubbing against her leg’ and tried to remove it.
“To her utter shock and disbelief, as she ran her hand over the hem of the dress she felt an unusual bulge and suddenly realized that it was not a string that was rubbing against her leg but was instead a leg rubbing against her leg. The leg of a dead rodent that is.
“Zara breached its duty to exercise reasonable care in designing, manufacturing, inspecting, distributing, delivering, supplying, inspecting, and/or selling its products by negligently releasing into the marketplace a product that was defective by containing disease-causing rodents.”
Fiesel developed a rash. caused by a “rodent-borne disease,” the lawsuit states. She provided photos to the court of the “conspicuously depicting the dead rodent with at least one of its appendages protruding,”
TMZ reports a spokesperson for Zara said: “Zara USA is aware of the suit, and we are investigating the matter further. Zara USA has stringent health and safety standards, and we are committed to ensuring that all of our products meet these rigorous requirements.”
