Marler: don't rule out tomatoes just yet

While the entire industry now believes that tomatoes were not involved in the salmonella outbreak, Seattle food safety lawyer Bill Marler isn't so sure. As you might suspect... From the Web site www.lawyersandsettlements.com.

For other complainants that don’t know what made them sick (tomatoes, peppers or even salsa) or where they purchased contaminated food, Marler says the situation is more problematic, i.e., trying to figure out how to get victims compensated. "Not to sound trite but you must have someone responsible, someone to sue," he says.

"For example, there are a lot of cases where people ate out multiple times and ate dishes with tomatoes and peppers," explains Marler, " and within that time frame of getting sick, if they ate on Monday and again Tuesday at different Mexican restaurants, how will you know which one had contaminated food?" Marler's firm is investigating all of those possibilities.

"Even today I am not convinced it was solely peppers responsible for the outbreak," he adds. "I think tomatoes were involved early on in the outbreak. Investigators have been able to locate a certain water source at a certain supplier in Mexico and that supplier provided both peppers and tomatoes, so the water source was contaminated with salmonella. In other words, Salmonella did not necessarily come from the grower. Then they found contaminated peppers at a warehouse in Texas.

TK: Compared with the FDA, don't discount the "traceback" investigation by Marler; he is more than motivated enough to find someone to sue, it seems.

Salmonella headline roundup - Wal-Mart gets sued

Why not a salmonella headline roundup? Let's have another go with Google and see what is being written about this never-ending story....

Jalapenos at Valley Bashas' test positive for salmonella

Bill Marler finds someone to sue in salmonella outbreak From the story:

This morning, Marler, joined by David Woodruff, a Colorado attorney, made his first move, filing a lawsuit against Wal-Mart and a John Doe jalapeño supplier on behalf of Brian Grubbs, a resident of Dolores, Colorado. The salmonella suit, which makes claims for, among other things, strict product liability, negligence and negligence per se, was filed in Colorado’s aptly-named Montezuma County court.

First salmonella lawsuit filed From the story:

"Mr. Grubbs became sick after eating jalapenos purchased from Wal-Mart," says Marler, "and it was the only thing he ate different from his wife." Fortunately, Mrs. Grubbs had the wherewithal to contact the local health department and insisted on getting the peppers tested. "She really pestered them to get the test done and now it has become a crucial piece of evidence," says Marler.

Marler explains that health departments are inundated with requests to test food and most of the time those requests are unfounded, mainly because people think the food that sickened them was the last food they ate. In this case, Marler says they got lucky: The Grubbs family still had some of the jalapenos that sickened Mr. Grubbs.


TK: Mr. Grubbs and the "smoking gun" pepper. One would assume Wal-Mart will fight this lawsuit with vigor. Here is a somewhat dated Marler Clark powerpoint...