Personal Injury Law

Yet Another Reason NOT to Poison Your Food Customers - Peanut Corporation Claims Top $200 Million

By Bill Marler, Esq.

Ray Reed of the Lynchburg News and Advance reported today that '[c]laims totaling $202 million had been filed Thursday against the Peanut Corporation of America in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lynchburg, as next Monday's deadline for filing claims approached."

He continued:

Among the claims were eight involving deaths attributed to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that was traced to PCA plants in Blakely, Ga., and Plainview, Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control. PCA was headquartered in suburban Lynchburg, on Wiggington Road in Bedford County. Its president, Stewart Parnell, asserted his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions during appearances this year before Congress and in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Lynchburg.

The Marler Clark law firm in Seattle, Wash., filed the death claims, each of which seeks $10 million for the victims' estate or relatives. Marler Clark also had filed 86 [actually 87] claims of $1 million each for people who said they were sickened by salmonella. Another claim was being filed Thursday, said William Marler, a principal in the firm….

The CDC said a total of 714 illnesses nationwide were caused by the strain of salmonella identified in the PCA plants, and nine of those victims died.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).