Staten Island Advance reported this morning:
Parents: Tainted hamburger sickened our daughter
A 12-year-old Great Kills girl has been hospitalized on Staten Island for E. coli poisoning and her parents are convinced she became sick after eating a helping of recalled hamburger meat. Brianna DiMartini, 12, is in the pediatric intensive care unit of Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, more than a week after she had a hamburger made from Topps Meat Co. chopped meat, her parents told the Advance yesterday. Frank DiMartini, Brianna’s father, said the family bought a package of meat — part of the batch that was recalled — from the Waldbaum’s on Amboy Road in Eltingville.
Strangely, my first HUS, E. coli client’s name was Brianne Kiner. Her case eventually settled for $15,600,000 in 1993.
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Cathleen F. Crowley of the Albany Times Union wrote this afternoon about the lawsuit we filed:
Watervliet family sues over tainted meat
The family of a Watervliet girl who became sick after eating a Topps hamburger filed a lawsuit today in Albany County Court. The suit holds Topps Meat Company liable for the E. coli infection the girl suffered and seeks unspecified damages. Topps Meat Co. has been identified as the manufacturer of frozen meet patties that infected at least 25 people nationally, and several in New York. The 8-year-old Watervliet girl was hospitalized for several days starting on Aug. 22, but is expected to recover fully.
Topps Meat Co. last week instituted a voluntarily recall of about 331,582 pounds of frozen ground beef products because they may be contaminated with E. coli, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. E. coli is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. The ground beef was distributed to food service institutions in the New York metropolitan area and retail establishments nationwide. The USDA says an investigation into a cluster of illnesses in the Northeast led to a positive product sample in New York. News of the potential contamination sparked at least one law firm, Marler Clark L.L.P., P.S. in Seattle, to file a lawsuit against Topps in a New York court. The firm says residents of New Jersey, Connecticut, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania were reportedly affected by the E. coli outbreak.
Marler Clark E. coli Attorneys File Lawsuit Against Topps
A lawsuit was filed today against Topps Meat Company, the meat producer whose ground beef products have been identified as the source of an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, and who expanded a ground beef recall to include 21.7 million pounds of meat over the weekend. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Albany County, New York, residents Robert and Catherine McDonald and their young daughter, who became ill with an E. coli O157:H7 infection and was hospitalized after eating a hamburger made of Topps Meats ground beef on August 17th. The McDonald family is represented by the Seattle law firm, Marler Clark, and the upstate New York law firm Underberg & Kessler.
According to the lawsuit, the McDonalds’ daughter fell ill with symptoms of an E. coli infection, including nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps, fever, chills, and muscle aches on August 20. On August 22, she was admitted to the hospital, where she provided a stool specimen that later returned positive for E. coli O157:H7. She was released from the hospital on August 24, and continues her recovery at home.
“We saw massive recalls and countless illnesses and deaths due to E. coli-contaminated ground beef in the 1990s,” said William Marler, attorney for the McDonald family. “Between 1993 and 2002, my clients were awarded $250 million in verdicts and settlements from the meat and restaurant industries. But in 2002, meat producers cleaned up their act. I touted the meat industry as a model for what an industry could do that was right to protect consumers.”
“Aside from sporadic cases, outbreaks traced back to meat products have been largely absent in the last five years,” Marler continued, noting that together with Underberg & Kessler Marler Clark represented another young Albany County child in a lawsuit against Topps two years ago. “2007 has been an anomaly in the meat industry, but now that outbreaks are happening, the industry needs to once again step up to the plate and compensate consumers for their injuries.”
More from USA Today – well, Tuesday:
Meat recalls point to possibility E. coli threat is growing
Huffman (American Meat Institute) cautions the rise could simply be a “random event.” But Bill Marler, the nation’s leading E. coli plaintiff’s attorney, says, “Something has changed, and it has not changed for the better.”
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