Salmonella Victims Should Come First
MEDINA, Ohio – I represent the families of three elderly women who died as a result of complications from Salmonella contracted from peanut butter produced by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).
These blameless seniors managed to survive all the vagaries of age, disease and trauma only to succumb to an agonizing and irreversible shut down of their vital organs occasioned by consumption of contaminated peanut products.
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PCA, the company at the heart of this national tragedy, has already sought protection from its creditors under federal bankruptcy laws. The company’s president, Stewart Parnell, has invoked his right against self-incrimination in light of the criminal charges that will likely follow.
The company’s insurer, Hartford, commenced litigation seeking to protect its rights by claiming its multi-million dollar policy does not apply to the losses suffered by my clients and the hundreds, if not thousands, of other victims of this outbreak. Everybody’s rights are being protected, it seems, except those of the victims who suffered the greatest losses of all: Their health and in some cases, their lives.
This isn’t right. Take the case of Nellie Napier, an Ohio woman who lived in a nursing home and died on January 26, infected with Salmonella.
Abandoned by her husband, this mother of five children under the age of 18 went to work at a local company in 1967 earning less than a dollar per hour. She retired from the same company 23 years later never having made much money. Her “pension” was less than $100 per month, but she never once accepted government assistance.
Until Nellie entered an assisted living facility and later a nursing home, she lived for thirteen years with one of her children. An Akron Beacon Journal newspaper account of her life and death by Salmonella carried the headline: “Cleveland Indians fan and hero to her children, not just Salmonella victim.”
What about the rights of the Nellie Napiers of this country? Who’s protecting them?
Food consumers have a sacred pact with the purveyors and regulators of food products: We will buy from you, but you must protect us from the invisible pathogens that we are powerless to detect.
Stewart Parnell of PCA made millions in the peanut business. He was a respected member of the peanut producing community. In that respect, he is no different than Bernard Madoff — a trust abuser who invoked his rights as his customers lament the lack of theirs. The difference is that Madoff’s customers only lost money. Nellie Napier never had much and now she’s dead.
To contact attorney Fred Pritzker, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free), email Fred at fhp@prtizkerlaw.com or submit our free Salmonella consultation form
Meet Nellie Napier
The ninth person in the United States to die in the peanut butter Salmonella outbreak was an 80-year-old mother of six children who she raised on her own as low-wage factory worker in Ohio.
She was a devoted Cleveland Indians fan and a loving grandmother to 13 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Nellie Napier, 80, a long-time resident of Medina County, died January 26 from sepsis due to Salmonella. One of her five sons, Randy Napier, told the Akron Beacon Journal that his mother deserves to be known by name — not solely as the ninth victim of a deadly Salmonella outbreak.
She contracted her infection as a resident of a long-term care facility, where she regularly ate peanut butter to regulate her blood sugar level.
The family chose Fred Pritzker of national food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen Attorneys to represent them against Peanut Corporation of America, the maker of the peanut butter and the company that federal authorities have identified as the cause of the outbreak. Pritzker’s other clients in the outbreak include the families of two Minnesota women who also died after eating peanut butter in assisted living centers.
Randy Napier told the Beacon Journal that his family will fight for new food safety laws to protect American families from adulterated products.
“She dedicated her life to raising us,” Napier said. “She was very well liked by everyone she met and would not harm a flea. She was very quiet to the point of being shy, but she took care of us and kept us together.”
PritzkerOlsen Client Testifies in Washington
Less than two months after losing his mother to Salmonella poisoning, Minnesotan Jeffrey Almer captivated a congressional subcommittee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday with harsh criticisms of America’s food safety regulation and of the company that sickened his mother with contaminated peanut butter.
Shirley Almer, 72, of Perham, had beaten lung and brain cancer in 2007 and 2008. She was recovering nicely from a urinary tract infection and even talked about getting a new puppy. But then, suddenly, she was stricken with a deadly pathogen that came from a five-gallon tub of peanut butter at the assisted living center where she was staying.
“Cancer couldn’t claim her, but peanut butter did,” Jeffrey Almer told the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in Washington, D.C. His live testimony was a highlight at the packed hearing and the subcommittee posted a complete transcript of his speech.
He said he and his siblings were expecting to get their mother home for Christmas, but instead said tearful goodbyes to her on December 21 as she took her last breaths in a hospital in Brainerd, Minnesota.
Led by Jeffrey Almer, the heirs of Shirley Almer became clients of national food safety law firm PritzkerOlsen Attorneys. Firm President Fred Pritzker has filed a Salmonella wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the Almer family against Peanut Corporation of America, the Virginia company that federal authorities blame for the Salmonella outbreak.
PritzkerOlsen also represents the family of Doris Flatgard, 87, who also died in Brainerd with a Salmonella infection that matched the outbreak strain. Across the country, eight deaths and 600 illnesses have been associated with peanut butter and peanut paste manufactured by PCA at a now-closed plant in Blakely, Georgia.
Of PCA, Almer testified: “Their behavior is criminal in my opinion. I want to see jail time and I want to see them served nothing but the putrid sludge they’ve been troweling out.”
“Our family feels cheated,” Almer testified. “My mom should be with us today.”
Jeffrey Almer told the subcommittee that his mother was a proud American businesswoman who had a lot of “Sisu,” which is what Finnish people call a person with spunk, fortitude and determination.
Just after New Year’s Day, the Minnesota Department of Health informed the family that Shirley Almer had a positive test for Salmonella that matched the outbreak strain.
“She had unknowingly consumed Salmonella-laced peanut butter while in her immune compromised state of health,” Jeffrey Almer told the subcommittee.
On the same day that PCA Chief Executive Stewart Parnell refused to answer the subcommittee’s questions, Jeffrey Almer testified that PCA “appears to be more concerned with squeezing every dollar possible at the expense of sanitary conditions and sound food manufacturing processes.”
He continued: “PCA now has the blood of eight victims on their hands, along with the shattered health of a known 600 others” who were sickened by the outbreak stain of Salmonella. He said PCA’s legacy “is now that of a company that did what it could get away with until their shoddy practices led to one of the nation’s largest recalls.”
Mr. Almer closed his testimony by railing against America’s underfunded food regulatory safety net.
“Shirley Almer loved this country but was terribly let down by a broken and ineffective food safety system. She was let down in the worst possible way by the very government whose responsibility it is to protect its citizens,” he said. “We need strong laws, regulations and effective enforcement enacted to protect our families.”
Food Safety Needs Shot of Political Will
My law firm, Pritzker | Olsen, P.A., represents the families of two people who died and many people who were injured in the ongoing peanut butter and peanut paste Salmonella outbreak that has sickened over 500 people and killed at least eight.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection of the Blakely, Georgia, plant owned by the Peanut Corporation of America and believed to be the source of the outbreak revealed a shocking lack of safety controls and sanitation that likely caused this outbreak. A criminal investigation may already be underway, especially in light of the allegation that the plant sold adulterated peanut products after they tested positive for Salmonella.
Criminal charges, if any, and law firms like mine will eventually hold the wrongdoers accountable for this lethal Salmonella outbreak. Without question, far more money will be spent by those wrongdoers and their insurers for the harm they caused as compared with the paltry sum it would have taken to prevent the outbreak from occurring in the first place.
Thus, the real question is not how or why this outbreak occurred, but rather why it was not prevented in the first place?
The answer, simply enough, is because our food safety system is unsafe and needs an overhaul and a significant infusion of money and political will.
Consider this:
- According to the FDA, in fiscal year 2008, the agency inspected 5,930 domestic food establishments. Great! The problem is that there are 65,520 domestic food production facilities in the United States. According to Consumers Union, “This means that FDA is still inspecting U.S. food production facilities only once every 10 years.”
- The FDA oversees 80 percent of the nation’s food supply, but only receives 20 percent of food safety funding.
- The FDA’s entire budget is actually less than the budget for the school system in Montgomory County, MD, where the FDA resides.
- The FDA has no legal authority to actually require a recall of adulterated food.
- There is no law that requires food companies to complete a food safety plan including a food safety risk analysis that identifies potential sources of contamination, identifies appropriate food safety controls, and documents those controls in a food safety plan subject to FDA review.
There are no shortage of FDA regulatory critiques or bills intended to increase funding and food safety regulation. There has been, however, a lack of political will. Maybe that is changing. But not fast enough for our clients and the harms and losses they already suffered.
Second Peanut Butter Salmonella Wrongful Death Suit To Be Filed
Less than two weeks after filing the nation’s first wrongful death lawsuit in the ongoing, peanut butter-related Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak, Minneapolis-based Pritzker | Olsen, P.A., has been retained by the family of the late Doris Flatgard to file a second such suit. The firm issued a press release today with details:
PRESS RELEASE
Minneapolis, Minn. – January 31, 2009 — National food safety law firm Pritzker | Olsen, P.A., has been retained by the family of an 87-year-old Minnesota woman to file a Salmonella wrongful death lawsuit against Peanut Corporation of America, the company that federal officials have said is the cause of a 43-state outbreak that has resulted in eight deaths and more than 100 hospitalizations.
The suit on behalf of the family of the late Doris I. Flatgard will be the firm’s second wrongful death action to stem from the peanut product Salmonella outbreak, said Fred Pritzker, founder and president of Pritzker | Olsen. The firm’s first lawsuit – which was also the first of its kind in the nation – was filed less than two weeks ago in Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis for the heirs of Shirley Mae Almer, 72, of Perham, Minnesota.
Like the Almer lawsuit, the second suit will allege negligence on the part of Virginia-based Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) and Ohio-based King Nut Companies, a distributor of PCA products.
Both women were residing in Good Samaritan Society nursing homes in Brainerd, Minnesota, when they became infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium from eating contaminated King Nut peanut butter made by PCA and sold by King Nut Companies.
Mrs. Flatgard died January 4 at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd, 14 days after Mrs. Almer died. The King Nut peanut butter they ate was recalled January 10 by PCA, which has since expanded its Salmonella contamination product recall to include everything produced at its Blakely, Georgia, plant since January 1, 2007.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has said that Salmonella infections from PCA products might have contributed to eight deaths, including three in Minnesota. Besides Mrs. Almer and Mrs. Flatgard, the third Minnesotan to die in connection with the outbreak was Clifford Tousignant, 78, of Duluth. Tousignant also was residing in a Good Samaritan nursing home in Brainerd when he was sickened by the outbreak strain of Salmonella.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has identified the Georgia plant as the source of the ongoing outbreak, which began in early September and has sickened more than 529 Americans. In addition, the FDA has launched a joint criminal investigation of PCA with the U.S. Department of Justice. An FDA inspection of the Georgia plant in January found instances of the company selling product that had tested positive in the plant for Salmonella. The company retested the product and shipped it, the FDA has said.
Mrs. Flatgard was born November 21, 1921, near Sanish, North Dakota. She lived in the area around Bergen, Minnesota, before moving to Brainerd to reside at Good Samaritan’s Oakwood House.
Pritzker | Olsen has considerable experience and a reputation for success in representing survivors of foodborne illnesses (including E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella and Shigella). The firm is involved in virtually every national outbreak and has collected large sums on behalf of people injured or killed by adulterated food. In addition, the firm is devoted to educating the public about food safety issues and advocating for badly needed food safety legislation and increased funding for the federal, state and local agencies charged with protecting our food and enforcing food safety laws.
Fred Pritzker and members of his firm are frequent guests and commentators about food safety issues and have been interviewed by and profiled in a number of media sources including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and CNN.
For more information, visit http://www.pritzkerlaw.com or contact Fred Pritzker at (612) 338-0202. PritzkerLaw has offices are located at Plaza VII, Suite 2950, 45 South Seventh Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402
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