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Judge Nixes Peanut Butter Class Action

Poisoned consumers can't combine their salmonella claims

By Truman Lewis
ConsumerAffairs.com

August 3, 2008

• Judge Nixes Peanut Butter Class Action • FDA Failed to Follow Up on 2004 Peanut Butter Contamination • Peter Pan Returning To Store Shelves • Consumers Still Getting Sick From Tainted Peanut Butter • Fourth Peanut Butter Death Reported • Peanut Butter Recall Extended to Products Made as Early as 2004 • Peanut Butter Scare Stirs Congress • Consumers Left Holding the Peanut Butter Jar • Earlier Peanut Butter Contamination Kept Quiet • Peanut Butter Developed as a Health Food • Third Death Blamed on Peanut Butter • Peanut Butter Recalls Spread to Ice Cream & Desserts • FDA Says Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak Is "Ongoing" • Salmonella Confirmed in Peanut Butter • Second Death Linked To Tainted Peanut Butter • Death Linked To Tainted Peanut Butter • ConAgra Recalls Tainted Peanut Butter as Complaints Mount • FDA Widens Peanut Butter Warning • Reports of Peanut Butter-Borne Illness Increase • FDA Warns of Salmonella in Peanut Butter --- • Consumer Complaints about Peanut Butter --- • Salmonella: What It Is • More about Food Safety ...

Consumers poisoned by salmonella-tainted peanut butter can't pursue a class action lawsuit against ConAgra, the producer of the Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter blamed for thousands of illnesses in 2006 and 2007, an Atlanta judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. said a class action would make little sense because it would not clear the courts of thousands of individual actions and would not effectively compensate plaintiffs.

The judge said that ConAgra has refunded more than $33 million to consumers and retailers and that such refunds were "likely more effective" than a class action.

Lawyers had sought to create one class of plaintiffs who had purchased the tainted peanut butter and another class who were sickened or died after eating it.

Thrash said there are at least 6,000 individual personal injury cases already pending and that most of those trials would proceed whether or not a class action was certified. An additional class action case would be essentially "expensive, unnecessary, meaningless," he said.

Dalton, Ga., Attorney Robert H. Smalley said he was disappointed with the ruling but said the judge raised an issue that needs to be addressed — the thousands of pending cases and an unknown number of yet-to-be-filed cases.

Besides the cases filed against ConAgra in Atlanta federal court, there are a "great number" of cases in various state courts, Smalley said.

The 2007 recall followed hundreds of illnesses and at least four deaths stemming from the salmonella contamination of peanut butter at ConAgra's manufacturing plant in Sylvester, Ga. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received reports of 628 illnesses, including 71 hospitalizations. Health officials concede that many cases were never reported or investigated.

At least four deaths were unofficially attributed to the outbreak.

Documents obtained by ConsumerAffairs.com through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that ConAgra discovered “microbial problems” in October 2004 but the FDA did not follow through on the finding.

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