If you haven't read Part 1, the short version is this: Driscoll's is facing civil lawsuits alleging it didn't disclose pesticide residue on its strawberries while marketing them as meeting "rigorous food safety and quality standards." Nothing has been proven in court, Driscoll's disputes the claims, and no recall has ever been issued. I said I'd update this when something actually changed. Something did — enough that I think it deserves its own post instead of getting buried at the bottom of a list under a September date.
WatchWhat's New
On October 2, 2026, a proposed class action was filed in the Superior Court of Quebec. It's a new case, in a new country, with a new allegation that the two U.S. cases didn't make: that Driscoll's discontinued its own internal safety-monitoring system in 2022 — and kept selling into Canada anyway, despite notices from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), a testing firm (RQA Inc.), and Canadian buyers flagging irregularities. That's now three open civil cases running at the same time, in two countries, against the same company, over the same basic question: pesticide residue on the fruit versus what the label and the marketing said about it.
WatchWhat Made Someone File in Canada
This one has a more specific origin story than the U.S. cases. In June 2026, a former Driscoll's employee named David Harada filed his own lawsuit alleging that roughly half of the company's berry exports to Canada between 2022 and 2024 contained chemical residue levels above what Canadian rules allow — affected shipments he valued at close to US$100 million. That whistleblower suit is what put the company's Canadian compliance record on the record in the first place.
From there, the new proposed class covers anyone who bought Driscoll's strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, or blueberries in Quebec since January 1, 2022. The complaint names three specific pesticides — bifenthrin, iprodione, and captan — and points to CFIA store inspections between 2022 and 2024 that reportedly found fruit above the permitted thresholds for those chemicals, plus consumer reports of an unusual chemical taste or odor on some Driscoll's blueberries and some claims of resulting illness. None of that has been tested or proven in a courtroom yet — a proposed class action is one side's complaint, and a Quebec judge still has to authorize it before it can proceed as a class action at all.
Driscoll's response, on the record: the company "disputes those allegations and welcomes the opportunity to address these claims through the legal process," and maintains its berries are safe and meet Canadian regulatory requirements.
WatchRead the Three Cases Yourself
I'm not going to ask you to just take my summary for it. Here's where to find each case — the actual complaints and dockets, not someone else's writeup of them. Quebec Superior Court doesn't have a free public docket system the way U.S. federal courts do through PACER, so that one links to the news reporting that broke it instead of a court filing.
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Washington v. Driscoll's, Inc.
The original California case. Filed in Santa Cruz Superior Court in June 2026, removed to federal court in July. Covers California purchasers. A motion to send it back to state court is still pending; a case management conference was set for early October.
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Berlinger v. Driscoll's, Inc.
A separate federal case filed directly in June 2026, with six plaintiffs from Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts — a broader geographic claim than the California-only Washington case. The two cases occupy the same courthouse but haven't been consolidated.
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Quebec class action (name not yet public)
The newest case, and the only one alleging Driscoll's dropped its own internal safety monitoring in 2022. Covers Quebec purchasers of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries since January 1, 2022. No free public docket exists for this court the way PACER covers U.S. federal cases, so these are the news outlets that have reported directly on the filing.
Worth noting, since it's easy to read past: the two U.S. cases both involve eight PFAS-related compounds, and both articles covering them are explicit that neither case alleges a U.S. legal limit was actually exceeded — there isn't an enforceable FDA or EPA limit for PFAS in food to begin with. The Quebec case is different: it alleges specific Canadian thresholds for named pesticides were exceeded, which CFIA's own inspections reportedly back up. These are not the same claim wearing two different flags.
Here's the question I keep coming back to: if the same company has three separate civil lawsuits open against it, in two different countries, all making some version of the same claim about the same product — and no food safety agency in either country has recalled anything — would you still buy it?
I don't think there's a clean answer. A lawsuit is one side's allegation, not a finding of fact, and Driscoll's is disputing all three. But "no recall" and "no FDA/CFIA action" isn't the same thing as "cleared" — it can also just mean nobody with recall authority has finished looking yet, or that nothing alleged crosses a legal threshold that triggers one. Three open cases making overlapping claims, however untested, is still three groups of people who believed this was worth taking to court. That's worth weighing against the fact that nothing has actually been proven against this company. I'd rather you read the actual filings above and land somewhere yourself than take my framing of it.
What I'm Watching For Next
- Quebec authorizationA Quebec judge has to authorize this as a class action before it can proceed at all — that's the first real checkpoint, and it hasn't happened yet.
- The remand motionWashington v. Driscoll's still has a pending motion over whether it belongs in state or federal court — that decides a lot about how it moves from here.
- Case management conferencesBoth U.S. cases had conferences scheduled for early October 2026 — that's usually where a judge sets the actual timeline for what happens next.
- Any consolidationWashington and Berlinger are in the same courthouse but not yet combined — if that changes, it usually speeds things up.
I'll keep checking back and post a Part 3 if there's an actual ruling, certification, settlement, or trial date in any of the three cases — not just more coverage repeating the same filings.