CHI-CHI'S Hepatitis outbreak kills 4th person

The victim was one of about 660 people who became ill last fall.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A 50-year-old Aliquippa man is the fourth person to have died from a hepatitis A outbreak traced to a Mexican restaurant in western Pennsylvania, his family's attorney said Saturday.
Frank Rossi died Thursday at UPMC Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh. Results of an autopsy performed Saturday weren't complete, but the death certificate lists the cause as "complications from hepatitis A," Atty. Richard Urick said.
Rossi was one of at least 660 people sickened in an outbreak last fall traced to green onions served at a Beaver County Chi-Chi's restaurant. Three others died shortly after the outbreak became known in early November.
The Food and Drug Administration said tainted green onions from Mexican farms caused the Pennsylvania outbreak and others last fall that sickened at least 300 people in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Urick said Rossi's family will likely enter a mediation system for legal claims against Chi-Chi's. A federal bankruptcy judge is expected to approve the system Thursday in Delaware, where Chi-Chi's filed for bankruptcy in October, just weeks before the Pennsylvania outbreak occurred.
What happened
Families that can't settle claims in mediation will be given court permission to sue Chi-Chi's; court permission is required because bankrupt companies are generally shielded from lawsuits to protect their creditors.
The hospital performed an autopsy to pinpoint how the hepatitis A contributed to Rossi's death.
Rossi was still recovering from a heart valve replacement in February 2003 when he contracted hepatitis A.
He was in and out of hospitals in November and had been an inpatient since Dec. 26, all for various ailments stemming from hepatitis A, a virus that affects the liver, Urick said.