A lawsuit by a San Jose doctor claiming the Dragon Balls appetizer at a Los Gatos Thai restaurant was so spicy it burned her internally is set to go before a jury next year.
Harjasleen Walia sued Coup de Thai in July last year in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleging the dish scorched her vocal cords, esophagus and the inside of her right nostril.
“She incurred permanent injuries and will forever be damaged,” the lawsuit claimed.
The court has set August 25 for a jury trial expected to last five to seven days.
The restaurant in a court filing last year denied causing injury to Walia. As of August 23, the restaurant and its owner were still seeking medical records related to the incident, a court filing showed.
Walia went to dinner with a friend in July 2021 at the North Santa Cruz Avenue restaurant in the wealthy South Bay city’s downtown and ordered appetizers including Dragon Balls, her lawsuit said. The dish is currently described on the restaurant’s website as “Spicy chicken ball fried with mint, shallot, green onion, cilantro, kaffir lime leaves, chili, and rice powder, served hot,” for $11.
Because the Dragon Balls were advertised as spicy, Walia asked her server to have them “made with less spice as she does not tolerate spicy foods,” the lawsuit alleged, and the server “said that they would have the chef make them less spicy.”
A supervisor at the restaurant told this news organization shortly after Walia filed the lawsuit that Dragon Balls cannot be made in a “mild” version because the chili is inside the balls. If a diner wants Dragon Balls but says they cannot handle spicy foods, they are typically encouraged to order an alternative, Coup de Thai supervisor Luck Pryer said. The restaurant had never previously had a patron say they had been burned by a dish and needed medical attention, Pryer said.
In a court filing last year, Walia alleged without providing details that, “A new employee who prepared the dish made an error and added additional peppers, rather than reducing them as requested.”
Walia, a neurologist at HeadacheAwayMD Brain & Spine Center in San Jose, claimed that almost immediately after she started eating the Dragon Balls, she “felt her entire mouth, the roof of her mouth, her tongue, her throat and her nose burn like fire,” and that her “eyes and nose watered, and she began coughing.”
Her lawsuit, which also targets as defendants Coup de Thai owner Tanatcha Swangchaeng and unnamed restaurant staffers, points a finger at Thai “bird’s eye” chili peppers as the ingredient that allegedly made Walia’s Dragon Balls “unfit for human consumption.” Swangchaeng, a chef, a server and others involved with the appetizer “failed to take precautions by consulting with health officials or emergency service personnel regarding the risks associated with serving too much Thai chili in an appetizer like Dragon Balls,” the lawsuit claimed.
Restaurant staffers should have been trained to serve Thai iced tea or “some other dairy-based product” in the event that a customer reacted badly to “spice intensity,” the lawsuit alleged. Walia claimed that immediately after the Dragon Balls started burning her, she and her companion asked for yogurt or another milk product, but “no milk, ice cream, yogurt, sour cream or other dairy product was provided or offered,” the lawsuit alleged.
Walia, the lawsuit claimed, “drank an entire glass of coconut water and more water, but the burning did not subside.”
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Pryer, the supervisor, said at the time of the lawsuit’s filing that she was working the night Walia dined at Coup de Thai, and that Walia returned the next day saying her throat had been burned and she needed to see a doctor.
A doctor at the Washington, D.C.-based National Capital Poison Center told this news organization earlier that eating Thai chilis — hotter than cayenne peppers but not as fiery as habaneros — can irritate the mouth and throat and cause nausea and heartburn. However, Dr. Kelly Johnson-Arbor added, “they are not associated with permanent tissue damage.”
Walia is seeking medical expenses, plus allegedly lost income and damages, totaling more than $35,000, according to court filings.
A mandatory settlement conference has been scheduled for Aug. 20 next year, five days before the trial date.
