E. coli settlements reported

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports of settlements relating to wrongful death lawsuits linked to E. coli tainted spinach.
From the April 21 story:

The family of an 81-year-old Nebraska woman who died after eating spinach grown at a San Benito County ranch has reached an undisclosed settlement — the first in what could be a long line of cases stemming from last year's E. coli outbreak.
Two other fatal cases linked to the outbreak in August and September also have been settled. But the circumstances surrounding the wrongful death lawsuits of Betty Howard, 83, of Richland, Wash., and June Dunning, 86, of Hagerstown, Md., weren't as "cut and dried" as the death of Ruby Trautz, according to Bill Marler, the Seattle-based attorney representing the three families as well as dozens of others sickened in the outbreak.
Sarah Brew, an attorney for Dole Food Co., confirmed the settlements were reached in late March in San Diego and the mediation took place in front of retired federal court Judge Lawrence Irving. But she would not comment further.
Attorneys for Mission Organics, which grew the spinach, and Natural Selection Foods, which packed it, could not be reached for comment.
Three people died and nearly 200 were sickened in the outbreak.

Family members described all three parties as "very apologetic" during the mediation process
and said their cases centered more on who should be held more culpable for the deaths — Dole, the marketer; Mission Organics, the grower; or Natural Selection Foods, the processor.
According to Marler, all of the parties are "liable under the law from a consumer's perspective," and they and their insurance companies all came to an agreement on the settlements.

TK: One of the family members quoted talked about the difficulty of putting a monetary value of a person's life. No matter how much money is paid out by insurance companies, the loss of life and health cannot be overcome in a settlement. The extraordinary food safety measures that the industry is now moving toward - despite what one FDA official described as a "paucity of science" - speak to the desperate wish to avoid the human and financial toll of another E. coli outbreak.