California Injury Lawyers Blog
A former peanut company executive serving a 28-year prison sentence will not have to pay money to victims of a deadly salmonella outbreak linked to his Georgia facility, a federal judge ruled.
As reported in the Claims Journal, former Peanut Corporation of America owner Stewart Parnell and three co-defendants were spared by the judge on Wednesday from paying restitution to the families of hundreds who got sick after eating tainted peanut butter in 2008 and 2009. The outbreak was blamed for nine deaths and 714 illnesses.
Convicted of knowingly shipping tainted peanut butter and faking results of lab tests for salmonella, Parnell received the harshest criminal penalty ever for a U.S. producer in a food-borne illness case when he was sentenced to prison in September. His brother, food broker Michael Parnell, got 20 years in prison.