Salmonella Lawyers Outbreak Update of States with Salmonellosis Cases Linked to Peanut Corporation of America Source Peanut Butter Products, Including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming Attorneys for Salmonella Outbreak Salmonellosis Cases Linked to Peanut Corporation of America Peanut Butter.

For our salmonella food poisoning lawyers information regarding salmonella and salmonellosis cases generally, please scroll down, where our attorneys will discuss the salmonella bacterium, how it finds its way into food products, the symptoms of salmonellosis, and the history of salmonella outbreaks. Because of the recent salmonella outbreak resulting from a host of products contaminated with peanut incredients supplied by Peanut Corporation of America, our salmonella attorneys consider it important to provide this update at the outset of this page with regard to the source of the salmonella outbreak; the information which has been compiled with regard to the liability of Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), its negligence, intentional misconduct, and fraud; information with regard to PCA's bankruptcy; its insurance company's early assertion of non-liability due to Peanut Corporation conduct, yet the confidence of our food poisoning lawyers that ample sources of insurance and assets nevertheless should be available from manufacturers, distributors and retailers in the chain of commerce to compensate victims; and the availability of our Henke Law Group salmonella lawyers to provide case evaluations nationwide. Please see our updates below, including that the PCA recalls have now been extended back to 2007. There have been over 2000 food product recalls resulting from contaminated peanut incredients incorporated in food products manufactured and then destributed by scores of manufacturers, and the list is growing. So if you sufered salmonella poisoning and you suspect that a product subject to the Peanut Corporation of America FDA recall may have been the cause, our salmonella lawyers invite you to contact us.

If you would like to consider our qualifications as food poisoning lawyers generally, you may refer to our "Food Poisoning Lawyers" page. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with salmonella poisoning, or has suffered symptoms of salmonella poisoning within 12 to 72 hours after ingestion of a potentially contaminated food product, such as fever, headache, diarrhea, abdominal cramping, vomiting and nausea, and dehydration, please complete our salmonella lawyers "Case Evaluation Request," and one of our salmonella food poisoning lawyers will contact you to discuss your case. Our salmonella attorney case evaluations are provided without charge or any obligation.

As of late February, 2009, the FDA and CDC had identified already more than 22,000 persons who had suffered salmonella poisoning after ingesting products containing ingredients manufactured at Peanut Corporation of America's Blakely, Georgia and Plainview Texas plants. As our salmonella lawyers explain elsewhere, this is a contaminated ingredent food poisoning outbreak that extends potentially to more than 2000 food products, because the PCA plants sold peanut ingredients to other food manufacturers who then incorporated the salmonella contaminated ingredents into their products. The PCA outbreak strain of salmonella tymphimurium has been found in products causing illness in over 40 states, and the number is steadily growing. On a separate page of this site our salmonella lawyers provide a Recall List of Products Containing Peanut Corporation of America Ingredients demonsrating the breadth of the FDA recall, representing the largest product recall in United States history. In the opinion of our salmonella attorneys, the number of confirmed salmonellosis cases attributed to the contamination at the Peanut Corporation of America facilities are certainly just the tip of the iceberg, in part because most cases will not be reported, either because the infected individual suffers relatively minor symptoms, or doesn't see a physician, or because the physician fails to report the case. As the result, our salmonella lawyers believe that the numbers of salmonella poisoned individuals may be much greater, and that the incidence of salmonellosis related to the Peanut Corporation of America peanut butter salmonella outbreak may involve every state of the United States.

In order to provide accurate information, our salmonella lawyers need to insert the proviso that diagnosis, reporting, and identification of the strain of salmonella in salmonellosis cases may vary from state to state, particularly in the early results of FDA and CDC investigation, however, from the early reports it appears that the greatest incidence of PCA associated salmonella cases have arisen in Ohio, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. While our salmonella food poisoning lawyers believe that it is possible, and even likely that PCA related cases of salmonellosis have occurred in every state, as of the date of this update, the FDA and CDC have confirmed cases with the PCA strain of salmonella in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

As of the still early date of this update our salmonella lawyers are aware of 8 individuals who have died as the result of salmonella food poisoning identified as resulting from the PCA strain of the bacterium, and while we hope that the number will not grow, we expect that it will. As our salmonella attorneys discuss more fully below, salmonella will commonly strike more severely the young and old, and those who are immune compromised, such as people with HIV disease. Over 100 of the first 500 identified with the PCA strain of the bacterium were children under the age of five years old.

Our salmonella attorneys need to make plain that it is not just the ingestion of peanut butter that has resulted in the present Peanut Corporation of America salmonella outbreak; rather the food products that have caused the cases of salmonellosis include numerous products which contain peanut ingredients, including cookies, crackers, energy bars, cereal and even ice cream. The PCA plants sell peanut ingredients to big and small companies which incorporate the ingredients in their products, including such name brands as Kellogg, McKee Foods and Little Debbie, and the list recalls is growing daily. As examples, Kroger has recalled certain of its peanut butter ice cream, as has Perry's Ice Cream sold in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Meijer has recalled categories of its Meijer brand crackers and ice cream sold in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky.

If you or a loved one has suffered a salmonella illness or death which you consider may be associated with the recent peanut butter salmonellosis outbreak, our salmonella food poisoning lawyers would be pleased to provide you a free case consultation. Simply fill out our salmonella lawyers "Case Evaluation Request" and one of our Henke Law Group salmonella food poisoning attorneys will contact you. Our food poisoning consultations are free of charge and without obligation.

Our Salmonella Lawyers Provide the Initial Information With Regard to the Negligence, Intentional Misconduct and Fraud of Peanut Corporation of America Which Resulted in this Recent FDA and CDC Confirmed Salmonellosis Outbreak.

Our salmonella lawyers are compiling information on a daily basis from the federal investigations being conducted by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control, as well as the Texas Department of Health. It was the FDA and CDC that traced the salmonellosis outbreak to the Blakely Georgia plant first, and the Texas Department of Health has undertaken an on site investigation of the Plainview PCA plant. "There is a salmonella problem at the plant," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's division of food-borne, bacterial and mycotic diseases. Officials with the Texas Department of Health have identified the probable sources of the contamination as the product of their investigation. Federal investigators have said that PCA knowingly shipped its contaminated peanut ingredients.

From the information compiled by our salmonella lawyers, the likely cause of the salmonella contamination of the peanut products processed at the Peanut Corporation of America Plainview plant resulted from animal sources. Dead rats and rodent feces was found in proximity to an air intake ventilating the PCA Plainview plant production area.  There were also holes in the roof of the Blakely Georgia plant which permitted entry of bird feathers, undoubtedly bird excrement with rain water from the roof to enter the production area. Our salmonella lawyers provide additional information with regard to the "Source of the Salmonella Contamination at the Peanut Corporation of America Plant," explaining in more detail the current evidence with regard to the source of the salmonella contamination.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, the management of Peanut Corporation of America was well aware that the peanut ingredients that it shipped to manufacturers for inclusion in food products were contaminated with salmonella and that the many hundreds of products would be sold to consumers across America, risking their illness and death. Our Salmonella food poisoning lawyers have provided a separate page on this site, describing the "Intentional and Fraudulent Conduct of Peanut Corporation of America," in which we provide a detailed account of PCA's misconduct, and that of its operator, Stewart Parnell, in conscious disregard of the dangers to the lives and health the consumers.

Recognizing that conditions existed at the Peanut Corporation of America Plainview Plant that created the likelihood of salmonella contamination, as early as 2006, Kenneth Kendrick, an assistant manager of the plant sent e-mails to the Texas Department of Health warning about the leaking roof, which he stated could be a contamination issue specifically because of bird excrement. "Anything nasty you can think of comes from water off a roof," were Kendrick's words.

But as our food poisoning lawyers have discovered, Peanut Corporation of America was well aware that its peanut products were contaminated with salmonella. PCA operator, Stewart Parnell, knew this from the laboratory tests of its peanut products that repeatedly were returned "positive" for salmonella. According to industry standard such positive tests required that the manufacturer destroy the contaminated product. Instead, Parnell ordered the plant managers to send other samples out for retesting by different laboratories, and then with a "negative" report, Parnell would order that the product be "let loose" into commerce, his words of instruction to his manufacturers to send the peanut ingredients on to the purchasing manufacturers who would then incorporate the PCA ingredients into their products for sale to the consumer.

In one example that has come to the attention of our salmonella lawyers, as recently as August of 2008, upon receipt of a negative result from a second laboratory following a positive result for salmonella, Mr. Parnell wrote an e-mail to his plant manager stating "Okay, let's turn them loose then." And then even as the salmonella outbreak was spreading across the United States, Mr. Parnell wrote to his plant managers complaining about the cost to his business of the delays associated with the positive salmonella tests. "The time lapse, besides the cost is costing us huge $$$$$," Mr. Parnell complained in an October 2008 e-mail. It was also disclosed at a hearing before the United States House of Representatives, Energy and Commerce Committee that Mr. Parnell had also shipped products testing positive for contamination to intermediate manufacturers with a "homemade certificate" falsely attesting to product purity.

Words like "unconscionable" and "criminal" have been used to describe Mr. Parnell's conduct and that of Peanut Corporation of America leading to the hundreds of illnesses and 8 deaths from salmonella poisoning linked to the contaminated peanut ingredients, and those words were not first used by our salmonella lawyers but by the Congressmen investigating Peanut Corporation of America's culpability in the salmonella outbreak, and federal officials conducting the criminal investigation of PCA and its operator, Mr. Parnell. In the view of our salmonella lawyers, the conduct of Peanut Corporation of America was negligent, amounted to intentional and malicious conduct and fraud, in conscious disregard of the lives and health of the huge numbers of consumers that it knew would be exposed to its contaminated product, and should justify punitive damages.

Our Salmonella Food Poisoning Lawyers Discuss the Peanut Corporation of America Bankruptcy and Hartford Insurance Company's Insurance Coverage Contest, Reassuring Victims of PCA Salmonella Poisoning That Ample Assets and Insurance Is Available in Chain of Commerce to Satisfy Claims for Compensation.

On February 13, 2009, Peanut Corporation of America filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and it has closed its production facilities. The Chapter 7 filing probably represents an assessment that the company lacks sufficient assets to pay creditor claims. In addition, it has been reported that PCA's insurer, Hartford Insurance Company, is contesting insurance coverage for illnesses sustained as the result of salmonella poisoning, on the grounds of disclaimers for intentional conduct and/or fraud.

Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, victims of salmonella poisoning should not be concerned that either the bankruptcy or insurance coverage contest will preclude lawsuits for compensatory damage or undermine the ability of those who have suffered illness to obtain compensation for their general damages, medical expense and lost earnings.

By filing bankruptcy, litigation is initially subject to an "automatic stay" precluding lawsuits from going forward against the company. However, it is common to file a petition for relief from the automatic stay to seek bankruptcy court permission to go forward with litigation against the bankrupt, particularly where the bankrupt is insured. While the insurers may be accurate that PCA participated in conduct properly characterized as intentional and fraudulent, it is highly unlikely that a court would relieve the insurer of its obligation to defend the litigation, and so relief from the automatic stay of bankrupty should redily be granted to permit the litigation to proceed. Indeed, given the negligence of PCA, it is likely that the courts will find that the insurer's coverage contest is without merit in its entirety, and require the insurer to pay compensatory claims sustained in lawsuits against Peanut Corporation of America.

However, those suffering illness as the result of salmonella poisoning traceable to products containing Peanut Corporation of America ingredients will have ample opportunity to recover in lawsuits not only against PCA but against all those "in the chain of commerce" from PCA, the ingredient manufacturer, to the product manufacturer, the intermediate distributors, through to the retailer, because all those in the chain of commerce are liable to the consumer. It is our salmonella food poisoning lawyers' conclusion that there should be ample insurance and assets in the chain of commerce to satisfy the compensatory damage claims of all those suffering illness as the result of the PCA salmonella outbreak.

There is one aspect of damages that our salmonella food poisoning lawyers are not certain will be recoverable, and that is punitive damages. We certainly believe that there is ample evidence of Parnell's and PCA's knowing, intentional, and malicious conduct, in conscious disregard of human life and health. However, there is insufficient information currently available at the time this page is written to determine the extent of PCA's assets and liabilities, and it is still an open question whether its corporate shield may be pierced to assert liability against Stewart Parnell and perhaps others of the company's investors/owners. Generally speaking, insurance does not cover awards of punitive damages, and at the time of this writing there is insufficient evidence to say that there will be viable punitive damage claims against others in the chain of commerce, such as other food manufacturers or distributors who knew that Parnell's product was salmonella contaminated. Information with regard to the others in the chain of commerce will have to await the depositions of the relevant officials in the intermediate companies during litigation discovery.

In summary, our salmonella lawyers analysis at this early stage of litigation is that those who have suffered illness as the result of salmonella poisoning stemming from products containing Peanut Corporation of America ingredients should feel confident that there will be ample assets and insurance coverage to pay for their compensatory damages; and a competent investigation will ultimately reveal whether or not Peanut Corporation of America, its investors, or another culpable company in the chain of commerce will have sufficient assets to permit the recovery of meaningful punitive damages.

If you or a loved one has suffered salmonella poisoning or death from salmonella poisoning, and you suspect that the source may have been a product containing ingredients processed by Peanut Corporation of America, you are welcome to contact our salmonella food poisoning lawyers for a free case consultation. Simply fill out the "Case Evaluation Request" and one of our attorneys will contact you immediately.

Our Salmonella Lawyers Discuss the Symptoms of Salmonella Poisoning, the Medical Complications, Related Diseases and Death from Salmonellosis.

Salmonella refers to a number of strains of bacteria commonly associated with diarrhea in humans. The symptoms of Salmonellosis include

* Fever
* Headache
* Diarrhea
* Abdominal Cramping
* Vomiting and Nausea
* Dehydration

Salmonelllosis generally occurs within 12 to 72 hours after ingestion of the contaminated food product. The illness usually lasts 7 to 10 days and commonly resolves without complication, but more serious salmonella illness can also result, particularly in high risk groups, such as infants, children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems, who can develop severe illness that can be fatal if not promptly treated with antibiotics. Salmonella can enter the bloodstream from the intestines and cause life-threatening infections, and a percentage of those contracting Salmonella food poisoning will die. In a relatively small percentage of patients infected with Salmonella the disease may present with painful joints and urination complications associated with Reiter's syndrome. Reiter's syndrome is a reactive arthritis that results from an inflammation of the joints caused the salmonella infection. There is often a delay of weeks from the time of the initial symptoms of salmonella food poisoning appear and the time when the symptoms of the reactive arthritis are felt. In cases of Reiter's syndrome, the reactive arthritis is found also in non-joint areas, including muscles, skin or the eyes.

If you suspect that you or a loved one has suffered salmonella poisoning and serious illness which has resulted in hospitalization or death, our salmonella lawyers invite you to contact us for a free case consultation. Simply fill out the salmonella lawyer "Case Evaluation Request" and one of our attorneys will contact you promptly.

Of all cases of food-borne illness, Salmonella infections are the second most common in the United States, second only to Campylobacter infection. There are greater than a million cases of salmonellosis each year, possibly as many as 4 million, 95 percent of which are contracted from contaminated foods. Twenty percent of the cases lead to hospitalization. Approximately 30 percent of all deaths known to result from food poisoning result from salmonellosis. The salmonella infection results from ingestion of the bacteria, which usually involves the meat or eggs or milk of infected animals, but can also be transmitted from the feces of an infected animal or human, through contaminated manufacturing facilities or food handling at the facilities. Vegetables and fruits can also be contaminated in this manner resulting in samonella outbreaks.

Salmonella Outbreak Lawyers - Attorneys Serving Victims of the Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming by Providing Salmonella Lawyer Case Evaluations. We also Serve Those Who Make Inquiries With Regard to Salmonela, Salmanella, Salmoella, Samonella, Salmenella, Salmonilla, Salmnella, Salminella, Salmonellae.

Our salmonella lawyers are available to serve victims of salmonella outbreaks throughout the United States by providing case consultations. As noted above, there are some states that have shown very high incidence of salmonella food poisoning identified as having been caused by the particular strain of bacteria associated with the Peanut Corporation of America plants in Georgia and Texas. The states in which the most cases have been identified thus far are Ohio and California, however, we are pleased to provide case consultations to victims of the outbreak nationwide, including in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. It is recognized that Salmonella and Salmonellosis can often be variously spelled salmonella, salmonela, samonella, salmoella, salmnella, salmenella, salmonilla, salmanella, salminella, salmonellae and our salmonella attorneys including Mr. Henke, who commonly misspells the words when using the Internet, are pleased to invite all to contact us for a free consultation. Simply fill out the salmonella lawyers "Case Evaluation Request" and one of our salmonellosis lawyers will contact you promptly.