Food Poisoning Lawyer & Attorney : Bill Marler : Marler Clark

As the Post-Dispatch reported on February 25, a manager for a warehouse and transportation company in Madison admitted last month to illegally ordering that boxes of chicken be labeled and shipped without proper inspection - including some sent to a school in Joliet, Ill., where dozens of people fell ill.

Edward L. Wuebbels, the manager at Lanter Co., which was under contract with the Illinois State Board of Education to store and ship school lunches, pleaded guilty in federal court in East St. Louis of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Department of Agriculture and making false statements. He will face a sentence estimated at 24 to 30 months in prison.

According to court documents, the problem began Nov. 19, 2001, with an ammonia leak at the St. Louis warehouse of Gateway Cold Storage. Officials believed that the chicken, in sealed plastic, could be repackaged and relabeled without harm to consumers.

But Wuebbels asked Gateway to ship the product to Lanter, and ordered employees there to do the repackaging and relabeling even though it is not an approved inspection site. As a result, the product was not properly inspected.

From 300 to 600 boxes were shipped, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Smith. Most were not affected by the ammonia. But a shipment to Laraway Elementary School in Joliet had been contaminated and was prepared on Nov. 25, 2002, officials said.

When it was cooked, there was a smell of ammonia in the air, Smith said.

An estimated 170 people who ate the chicken complained of stomach aches, and 60 went to hospitals. Most were treated and released; none was permanently injured.

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As Marlene Hunt of the PioneerLocal reported, a settlement has been reached between 49 victims of the salmonella outbreak traced to the former Chili's Bar and Grill in Vernon Hills and Brinker International, owner of the franchise.

My firm filed individual lawsuits and a class action lawsuit in federal court in Chicago during 2003 seeking punitive damages on behalf of all outbreak victims. The settlement was worked out before the trial was scheduled to start.

Health officials determined the source of the salmonella infection was not due to improperly cooked food, but to employees who likely failed to follow proper hand washing techniques and a management decision to keep the restaurant open for two days even though its water supply was interrupted.

The food poisoning epidemic affected more than 300 persons who dined at the Vernon Hills restaurant between June 23 and July 1 in 2003. The health department interviewed about 1,200 individuals including 305 people whose illnesses appeared related to the outbreak. Of those, 141 patrons and 28 employees tested positive for salmonella.

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Two confirmed and four probable cases of E. coli O157:H7 bacterial illnesses have been linked by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to ground beef purchased at B & G Foods of Galesburg, IL. The product implicated in the illnesses was purchased from B & G between August 10 and August 16, 2004.

A sample of ground beef left over from an August 14 cookout tested positive for E. coli bacteria, and the strain matched that isolated from the two cases confirmed by IDPH. IDPH, the US Department of Agriculture, and the Illinois Department of Agriculture are working together to determine the source of the ground beef sold at B & G Foods.

I am absolutely astounded that after years and years of recalls the USDA does not have a better system for tracing tainted ground beef back to the source. There are measures in place to recall children's toys and cars - specific measures that allow manufacturers to trace a product directly to the individual who purchased it - but nothing for our food supply.

We've seen this time and again. People get sick, the Health Departments do a great job of investigating illnesses, but no one has the authority to look at a company's records and say, 'this is where the meat came from.' It's ridiculous.

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Marler Clark has settled the claims of 49 individuals who were infected with Salmonella after eating at the Vernon Hills Chili's Grill & Bar in late June and early July of 2003.

"We were far along in the process of preparing these cases for trial when settlement discussions finally seemed to turn serious," said Marler Clark partner Denis Stearns. "We believed strongly in our case, and the importance of the point we were trying to make about food safety and corporate responsibility. This was a case my partners and I really wanted to take to trial. But when finally faced with the chance to not only fully compensate our clients, but to do so in a way that showed the clients that, we really did send a message with this one, that was something we had to recommend accepting."

The Lake County Health Department's outbreak investigation revealed that the Vernon Hills Chili's had been under operation despite having a broken dish-machine and a lack of hot water for at least one day, and a lack of any water at all during most of the lunch-rush one day when infected food workers were preparing and serving food to patrons. The Lake County Health Department reported that 305 Chili's patrons reported having symptoms of Salmonella infection that could be traced to Chili's.

"In a way it is too bad that the amount of the settlement is confidential," added Bill Marler. "I think that more than most settlements we have achieved in the past, this one would really have made the restaurant industry sit up and take notice."

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