Bill Marler is not the man you want to see in the courtroom. Just ask Jack in the Box.
Following Jack in the Box’s 1993 E. coli outbreak, which sickened 600 people and killed four children, Marler won a $15.6-million settlement for a 9-year-old girl. Since then, he’s garnered clients more than $300 million from food companies.
These days, the country’s foremost authority on food-illness litigation is suing Taco John’s, Taco Bell, and Dole for their recent E. coli outbreaks. QSRmagazine.com’s Fred Minnick recently spoke with Marler to learn what makes this powerful man tick.
I’m more like Batman. [He laughs]. Some guys from Canada described me as the Wayne Gretzky of plaintiff’s lawyers. I certainly enjoy what I do because it makes me a good living, but it also allows me to have a non-profit company where I can spend one-third of my time talking to companies and health departments about how important it is to avoid food poisoning.
My partners and lawyer buddies ask the same question. But I look at the law as a tool for social change.
It was 75 percent dumb luck, and 25 percent hard work. I happened to be in Seattle when the Jack in the Box case hit, and Seattle really was the epicenter. I litigated the Jack in the Box case for two years and then settled $35-million worth of cases over the course of several months…Then, the Odwalla case hit. (Also in Seattle). That went on until 1998. Then shortly after that, I hired Bruce Clark and Denis Sterns, who had defended Jack in the Box. We started Marler Clark.
Well, I wouldn’t say it that way. They probably wouldn’t say it that way either. They were really good opponents and did the right thing for their client. They had in a sense lost the battle, but I think in some respects, Jack in the Box won the war by resolving claims and focusing on their business as opposed to fighting the lawsuit to some sort of standstill.
It sounds like such a big number until you actually think about it. In the spinach litigation, I’ve had lots of conversations with the lawyers for Dole and Natural Selection. They’re always trying to guesstimate the value of the claims. A lot of times, these companies get so wrapped up in the litigation that they’re really not paying attention to protecting their core competency and their core asset, which is their business.
We have 93 cases. We’ve been going through each one individually to figure out whether there’s a link to Dole Baby Spinach. We have eight lawsuits filed in six states, all in federal court, and we’re in the process of discovery, starting to exchange documents. The three target defendants are Dole, Natural Selection, and a recently named third, Mission Organics, which grew the most likely source of the contaminated spinach.