August 23, 2010
A recent nationwide recall of eggs appears poised to touch off a litigation egg-splosion. (We couldn’t resist.)
An Iowa egg producer this month announced the recall of about 500 million eggs that may be contaminated with salmonella.
It didn’t take long for Seattle lawyer William Marler (pictured), perhaps the nation’s leading tainted-food attorney, to spring into action.
Today in Iowa, he plans to file suit on on behalf of an 11-year-old girl in California who ended up in the hospital after eating eggs, according to an article in the USA Today. (The egg producer has declined to comment.)
Marler’s law firm, Marler Clark, has also filed suit in Wisconsin on behalf of a woman who claims she got sick after eating eggs at a restaurant in the state.
Marler told the National Law Journal that his firm has about 30 cases that appear linked to the egg recall.
“We may sue in federal court in Iowa and try to consolidate the case,” he told NLJ.
The salmonella outbreak has likely sickened 1,300 people, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA Today reports. No deaths have been reported.
Marler, according to this earlier WSJ profile, made his name in food-poisoning litigation in the early 1990s representing hundreds of plaintiffs against the Jack in the Box hamburger chain. His firm has since snared multimillion-dollars settlements against a number of food companies.
While Marler is a salmonella specialist, his firm also runs the E. coli Blog, and he once even boasted a shiny red Volkswagen with a lice plate that read: ECOL I.