Washington Injury Law Blog

A report from the AP today details how managers of the peanut butter plant at the center of the recent peanut butter recall, which has poisoned over 500 with salmonella, knew its peanut butter was contaminated with salmonella and shipped the stuff anyway. Company tests revealed salmonella present in products made by the company at least 12 times, but the company never cleaned the production lines. They just continued to ship the product out. As a Kirkland personal injury attorney I’m outraged and fuming mad.
 
These greedy corporate executives valued money over human lives. They ought to be locked up for the 8 people that died as a result of their gross negligence/intentional poisoning. You may even be able to make a case for premeditated murder. These corporate scumbags knew their food was contaminated with salmonella, knew it was dangerous and could kill people, and still shipped it without uttering one word of warning. Un-freakin’-believable! I hope the Georgia attorney general charges them with murder or at the very least manslaughter.
 
This is a great example of why this country needs and depends on trial lawyers, which I’m proud to be, to keep reckless corporations in check. The U.S. government has taken a largely hands off approach to regulating the safety of products produced by companies, be it food or some other product. The duty of holding corporations accountable for the heinous injuries they cause by producing tainted and defected products falls to the consumer and the trial lawyers they hire to help them. The next time some politician calls for tort reform and blames trial attorneys for all the ills of society remember this outbreak of salmonella that injured over 500 and killed 8 all because of corporate lust for money.
 
Every product produce by Peanut Corp. of America out of Blakely, Georgia has been recalled. Over 400 products used this company’s peanut butter.
 
Max Meyers, Esq.

If you’ve been living under a rock the past few weeks you may not have heard about the HUGE salmonella outbreak in peanut butter products across the country. 500 people have fallen ill, 280 of them have been children, and 8 people have died as a result of the salmonella illness. This is one of, if not, the worst food poisoning outbreaks in recent history.

The outbreak has been traced to a single peanut butter plant in Georgia that has been shut down now, but was operated by Peanut Corporation of America. The salmonella outbreak has forced the recall of over 180 products, which include crackers, cookies and treats made by Starbucks, General Mills, Kellog’s and other companies.

Common symptoms of salmonella poisoning include – diarrhea, vomiting and fever. It usually clears up without treatment, but can cause death in the very young or patients with other serious illnesses. For your families safety I would recommend avoiding peanut butter products and checking out the list of recalled products on the FDA website.

Additional information about the peanut butter recall can also be found on the FDA website.

Max Meyers, Esq.

I’m a fan of the show “The Biggest Loser.” The show recently promoted the use of Nalgene type water bottles as a way to stop filling the landfills with discarded plastic water bottles. This sounds like a great . . . BUT . . . Nalgene just announced that it will be pulling its hard plastic water bottles – that are made with controversial carbonate plastic Bisphenol A (BPA) – from store shelves.

When heated it has been reported that the toxic chemical Bisphenol A can leak out into the liquid to be drank. Baby bottles are commonly made with Bisphenol A plastic and there is a possible link to toxins getting into the baby’s milk. There is a possible link between the chemical Bisphenal A and neurological and behavioral problems in infants and babies, along with certain cancers, diabetes and obesity.

More than 6 million pounds of Bisphenol A is used each year in U.S. products. It can be found in baby bottles, dental sealers, liners of food cans, CDs and DVDs, eyeglasses and hundreds of household goods.

Nalgene plans to replace its bottles with Bisphenol A free plastic bottles. Perhaps the makers of baby bottles should do the same if they haven’t already!

Sources: msnbc; ABC Wolrd News

The tax man is coming! April 15th is fast approaching, meaning it is time to pay Uncle Sam his due. As a Kirkland Washington personal injury attorney I rarely wade into tax law issues. However, for all my Washington personal injury clients, there is one very important tax regulation that applies to personal injury lawsuit verdicts or settlement money.

If you are the injured victim or family member that recovers money as the result of a personal injury lawsuit or claim – then the money received is not taxed. Under Federal Treasury Regulation § 104(a)(2) Gross Income (potentially taxable income) does not include money (unless punitive damages – which aren’t available under Washington laws) received as the result of personal injury lawsuit /claim settlement, judgment, or verdict.

If you settled your car accident or other Washington injury accident case in the last tax year you will not have to pay taxes on it. You will probably have to report that you received a personal injury settlement or verdict, but no taxes will be charged against it. So when your accountant or tax software asks you about the amount received don’t worry, you won’t pay more taxes by telling the IRS about your injury settlement/verdict money. 

The tax code section reads specifically: “Section 104(a)(2) excludes from gross income the amount of any damages received (whether by suit or agreement) on account of personal injuries or sickness. The term “damages received (whether by suit or agreement)” means an amount received (other than workmen’s compensation) through prosecution of a legal suit or action based upon tort or tort type rights, or through a settlement agreement entered into in lieu of such prosecution.”

Ben Sansone of the Missouri Injury Law Blog had recent post on the same subject. If you live in Missouri you should definitely check out his blog, it is excellent.

A yearlong study of 21 Mercer Island, Washington children ages 3-11 showed that everyday foods commonly eaten contain low levels of pesticides. Although the pesticide levels met  government standards it is not known whether prolonged exposure to low levels of pesticides may cause harm down the road for these kids or us 10, 20, or 30 years from now. High-levels have been shown to cause serious health problems or even death.

When you switch to an organic diet the study found the pesticides disappeared within 8-36 hours. They came back almost immediately upon resuming a conventional diet. Click here for the full Seattle PI article.

You shouldn’t overreact and feel you have to switch to an all organic diet immediately according to the study. If you can great, go all organic. However, this can be an expensive, especially here in Seattle during winter when crops don’t grown. Knowing where your produce and food comes from can help. Buying from a local farmer who can tell you whether he uses pesticides on his crops or not is a good step. Or incorporate as much organic food into your diet as you can afford.

Hopefully more studies like this will be done. The more information we have the better we can make decisions on the food we buy and eat.

Doctors are now linking serious health problems and diseases to E. coli and other food-borne illnesses thought to have been recovered from years or decades earlier. The Seattle PI reports that scientists “described high blood pressure, kidney damage, even full kidney failure striking 10 to 20 years later in people who survived severe E. coli infection as children, arthritis after a bout of salmonella or shigella, and a mysterious paralysis that can attack people who just had mild symptoms of campylobacter.” ”‘Folks often assume once you’re over the acute illness, that’s it, you’re back to normal and that’s the end of it,’ said Dr. Robert Tauxe of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The long-term effects have yet to be studied in full so its unclear how many people are at risk. It’s also unclear what other illnesses may be linked to food poisoning. However, the lasting effects of food poisoning appear to have been totally underestimated. Just ask Seattle resident Alyssa Chrobuck who suffered E. coli poisoning as a 5 year-old in the Jack In the Box outbreak 15 years ago.

Alyssa was hospitalized with serious complications from the E.coli infection. Alyssa is now a 20 year-old college student who suffers from high blood pressure, hospitalizations for colon inflammation, a hiatal hernia, thyroid removal, and endometriosis. All of which is very uncommon for a 20 year-old young woman. She is convince if not for the E. coli infection her health would be much better.

According to the Centers for Disease Control food-borne illnesses cause 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths a year. Among survivors, some long-term consequences are obvious from the outset. Some required kidney transplants and may have scarred intestines that cause lasting digestive difficulty. According University of Utah’s Dr. Andrew Pavia, the university’s pediatric infectious diseases chief, E. coli doesn’t seem to trigger long-term problems unless it started shutting down the kidneys when first infected. Future studies may show otherwise, but for now it appears only about 10% of E. coli sufferers develop kidney problems when first infected, therefore only 10% may develop these additional health problems later in life.

Regardless still pretty scary stuff!