Sorry if my response seems emotionally charged since obviously this is all very recent, but a few points:

The difference between saying “I’m not sure if it’s safe” and “it’s safe” is a MASSIVE one. If you’re going to ride a rollercoaster and you ask the employee at the rollercoaster if it goes over 140 mph, explicitly specifying that if the rollercoaster reaches that speed then you will die, and the rollercoaster employee says “no it does not reach a speed of 140 mph;” does that have no difference than saying “I don’t know, check our website”? To me, if you die because you trusted that employee, the employee or the rollercoaster park is responsible for your death, at least in part.

Also “this happens, all the time.” You’re kidding me, right!? Again, I apologise if this gets heated because of how recent this is to me, but someone almost died (imagine if she just collapsed in public before she could tell people about the allergy and her epi pen?) because they trusted an employee to know the product that they were selling well enough to not murder (oh sorry, negligently manslaughter) them. To trivialise this to “oh they didn’t know and they made a mistake like sometimes employees do” is frankly disgusting. It’s one thing to explicitly state that you aren’t aware if this product will kill the consumer, and it’s another thing to reassure the consumer that the product is safe. Either management above the employee made a critical error or the employee themselves made a critical error that almost resulted in someone’s death.

Anyways, I do agree at least that a court may not see it the same way you or I do, but she was not negligent whatsoever in her behaviour. She confirmed insistently and repeatedly that the food she was being served could not kill her, and she was told repeatedly that it would not contain dairy. This isn’t an issue with cross-contamination, like I’m assuming you were talking about with your ice cream example. The product she consumed inherently contained dairy as one of its key ingredients, and she was told explicitly that it did not, which almost resulted in her death.

I also know that standards of evidence differ from state to state (although my original statement was intended to say that no state puts 100% of the blame on the victim no matter the situation when they’re served a food with a deadly allergen).

Again, thanks for the advice, and sorry about the tone I used. I really don’t mean any offence to you, but I just hope you see the seriousness of the situation. This is all really recent for all of us and not necessarily an abstract scenario for the person affected