PROVIDENCE — The state Supreme Court on Tuesday, vacating a lower court decision, ruled that the Department of Corrections is not shielded from liability for distributing a potentially contaminated product just because it was doing so as a part of a program for the public good.

Thomas Adams had sued the department in 2006 after he fell ill after eating a box of raisins from a local food bank that contained an insect.

Adams blamed the department, which acts as a central distribution center for food received from the federal government to be disseminated to food banks.

Adams participated in a food giveaway at the food bank at St. Raymond Church in October 2004 and got a number of items, including a 15-ounce box of raisins. Adams said he opened the factory-sealed box and ate the raisins, noticing an unusual taste and texture as he ate the final raisin. As he peered into the empty box, Adams said, he found what he would later learn was a two-week-old Indian meal moth larva and insect dung near the bottom of the box.

It was nearly two years later that Adams filed a Superior Court lawsuit against the Corrections Department. In the suit, he cited physical and emotional damage, saying he “suffered nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of sleep and mental anguish for several days.”

In November 2007, a judge ruled in favor of the Corrections Department, saying that the “public duty” doctrine, which protects the government from liability while performing certain functions on behalf of the citizenry, is applicable because the department was acting in behalf of the public good.

But the Supreme Court said that because a private company could perform the same function (storing or distributing food) and Adams’ alleged injuries resulted from improper storage of the food, then the public duty doctrine does not apply.

“The fact that government function is undertaken ‘for the public good’ will not suffice to bring said function within the ambit of the public duty doctrine unless it can also be shown that the function (or a closely analogous function) cannot be performed by a private party,” the court said.

tbuford@projo.com