What the lawsuit alleges
The civil suit was filed in Ventura County Superior Court against California-based Driscoll's Inc. and multiple employees. It was brought by David Harada, who worked as Driscoll's food and safety regulatory compliance manager for both the U.S. and Canada. Harada alleges that more than 50 percent of all Driscoll's shipments to Canada between 2022 and 2024 contained fruit that exceeded Canadian maximum residue limits, the legal ceiling for pesticide traces on food sold here.
The suit goes further than just exceeding limits. Harada alleges Driscoll's removed Canadian pesticide regulations from the food safety and compliance tracking system it uses to monitor pesticide usage, meaning the company's own internal checks would not have flagged fruit that broke Canadian rules. He also alleges a Driscoll's director of agronomy asked whether the company had plausible deniability regarding growers who applied pesticides above label limits, a question Harada's suit points to as evidence of an internal awareness of the problem.
A pattern of warnings from Canadian regulators
According to the lawsuit, Canadian regulators flagged the company's produce repeatedly in the years before Harada's departure. In October 2022, Driscoll's received a second notice within three months from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about Bifenthrin, a pesticide, showing up at higher than legally allowed levels. More recently, on June 23, 2025, the CFIA sent at least its fifth warning to Driscoll's, this one about consumers reporting a chemical taste when eating the company's produce.
Driscoll's response
Driscoll's has rejected the allegations. The company said in a statement that while the lawsuit filed by a former employee is fundamentally an employment matter, it rejects the allegations and will vigorously defend itself through the legal process.
The suit also alleges Driscoll's constructively terminated Harada, meaning it made his working conditions untenable rather than firing him outright, on October 1, 2025.
What happens next
A hearing in the case is scheduled for January at Ventura County Superior Court. Until then, the specific allegations remain unproven claims made in a civil filing rather than findings from a court or from the CFIA itself.
This case follows a separate set of allegations earlier this year involving a different major tech company. ottown's earlier report covered a whistleblower lawsuit accusing IBM of concealing data breaches at its subsidiaries, a reminder that whistleblower claims against large corporations, whether about data security or food safety, tend to take months or years to work through the courts.
Sources: News Channel 3-12 (KEYT), Lookout Santa Cruz
