A Smithfield man who last year sued Boar’s Head over last year’s multistate listeria outbreak tied to one of the company’s Virginia meatpacking plants appears to have withdrawn his complaint – for now.

Robert Reposa filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in federal court in September against Boar’s Head Provisions Co. Inc. The suit stated he’d purchased Boar’s Head brand deli meats from the Kroger grocery store in Smithfield in late July, days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service were investigating a listeria outbreak the CDC would later trace to a meatpacking plant in Jarratt. The complaint alleged Reposa to have been hospitalized for 14 days with a listeria infection due to a prior heart issue and to have “likely suffered permanent damage as a result of this exposure.”

The suit had sought $4.6 million in compensatory damages and $43.5 million more in punitive damages, alleging Boars’ Head “knew of the unsanitary practices present at its facilities” but “continued to put food products into the chain of commerce.”

Boar’s Head attorneys filed Dec. 18 to dismiss the case, which according to court records was superseded by Reposa’s own filing through his attorney, Robert Haddad, on Feb. 5, stating that the “parties have agreed that it would be appropriate to voluntarily dismiss the case without prejudice at this time” and that Reposa as defendant “has no objection to this dismissal.”

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne granted Reposa’s request on Feb. 10 to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” meaning the claims in Reposa’s complaint could hypothetically be brought back up in a future filing.

Haddad did not respond to the Times’ request for comments.

Boar’s Head announced in September it would indefinitely close the Jaratt plant, which the Sarasota, Florida-based company says has not operated since late July. It had not reopened as of May 1.

Boar’s Head, in prior court filings, said the only product the CDC had reported as being linked to the outbreak was Boar’s Head branded liverwurst, though the USDA had announced on July 30 that Boar’s Head had expanded its voluntary recall to include 71 products produced between May 10 and July 29 last year under the Boar’s Head and Old Country brand names.

Listeria, according to the CDC, is a typically rare but serious form of bacterial infection that can result from eating contaminated food. Outside of outbreaks, the CDC estimates 1,600 people are infected with listeria each year, and of those, 260 die from the infection.

The CDC had identified 61 people across 19 states as of Nov. 19 as being infected with the outbreak listeria strain, 60 of whom were hospitalized and 10 of whom died.