Phoebe Judge (3:43)

Earlier that month, within a span of 24 hours, nine kids had shown up at Seattle Children's Hospital with symptoms just like Riley's.

Jeff Benedict (3:54)

And one of the primary doctors at Children's Hospital in Seattle, when he saw that there were a number of children that had come in with these symptoms, mainly in their stomach and the throwing up, the diarrhea, the bloody diarrhea, he was immediately alarmed because of the number. And they kept coming.

Phoebe Judge (4:21)

This is writer Jeff Benedict. The doctor at the hospital got in touch with the state health department and reported that he'd never seen anything like this before. Nine sick kids with E. Coli in 24 hours made him worry that there were going to be a lot more. This was on a Tuesday, and by Friday, the number was up to 37. A few of the children had been moved to the icu. Doctors were trying to figure out what was going on.

Jeff Benedict (4:53)

One of the things that helped them early was the recognition that the victims who were showing up at the hospital were all children. And that tells you something. And it's like trying to solve a puzzle and you start looking backwards, okay, where did these children eat? And it didn't take them long to start turning their focus to fast food restaurants in the Pacific Northwest, particularly around the greater Seattle area. And step by step, they got to Jack in the Box.

Phoebe Judge (5:27)

Jack in the Box is one of the oldest fast food chains in the country. 27 of the 37 sick children had eaten there. The top public health official in the state, a man named John Kobayashi, called, contacted Jack in the Box headquarters and said they had a problem. A potential E. Coli outbreak at that time. What is known about E. Coli?

Jeff Benedict (5:58)

Very little. If you took a poll at that time on any public street in any major city in the US and asked, what is E. Coli? Most people would just look at you like what they they'd never even heard the term.

Phoebe Judge (6:15)

E. Coli is a kind of bacteria that can be found in the intestines of people and animals. There are many different strains of E. Coli and many don't cause any harm. But some can be deadly, including one called E. Coli O157:H7.

Jeff Benedict (6:34)

Back then, there hadn't really been a. A national outbreak of E. Coli. There'd been a few very small cases that had been studied by the medical profession. But most people, including the medical establishment, were unfamiliar with this. And so the hospital is sort of scrambling around, but they don't really know what they're dealing with.

Phoebe Judge (6:59)

One of the few things that they did know was that most people at the time got E. Coli from eating undercooked ground beef. State epidemiologist John Kobayashi asked Jack in the Box how they cooked their hamburgers. They said that they made sure to cook them to an internal temperature of 140 degrees, which was the federal regulation. But one year earlier, John Kobayashi had raised the Washington state required cooking temperature for ground beef from 140 degrees to 155 degrees. And Jack in the Box had just admitted that they hadn't been doing that at the time. What was the USDA doing in terms of food safety?

Jeff Benedict (7:48)

Not much, if you think about it in today's terms. You can go to a grocery store in any state in America and if you buy meat or poultry, there's stickers on the outside that warn you to cook them to the proper temperature and handling instructions and all that. I mean, at Thanksgiving when you buy a turkey, there's warnings on the outside about, you know, the things that can make you sick if you don't store it and cook it properly. The federal government does that well now, but then those things didn't exist.

Phoebe Judge (8:29)

Jack in the Box temporarily shut down their 66 locations in the state. And John Kobayashi issued a statement officially naming Jack in the Box as the source of the outbreak. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. By January 28, two children at Seattle Children's Hospital had died from E. Coli and there were over 200 confirmed cases. Jack in the Box's CEO, Bob Nugent was called to Washington, D.C. to testify in front of the Senate.

Jeff Benedict (9:18)

He was a, you know, relatively young CEO and he had two children, he had two daughters. And he felt guilty. He actually wanted to testify. He wanted to talk against, you know, the better judgment of his attorneys. And he said things that were essentially incriminating because he was. I don't know that he thought about it this way, but he was basically acknowledging that, that Jack in the Box had screwed up.

Phoebe Judge (9:57)

Bob Nugent acknowledged that their Washington restaurants hadn't been meeting the state mandatory cooking temperature and said, quote, I wish I had known about the Washington state regulation when it was established. I didn't. He also said it is important to note that the contaminated meat that was infected with the E. Coli bacteria before delivery to our restaurants had passed all USDA inspections.

Jeff Benedict (10:26)

But his intention was he was trying to take responsibility and he was also trying to protect his own company. But he, you know, he just. When I say as a journalist, he was too honest. What I mean by that is he was pretty raw. I think by that point he knew that his company had made an enormous mistake. And the only thing he was really focused on at that point was trying to figure out how to make sure that it never happened again.

Phoebe Judge (10:59)

Darren Detweiler has had heard about the outbreak before his 16 month old son Riley got sick. Their family hadn't eaten at Jack in the Box, but they later learned that it was possible to get E. Coli just from being in contact with someone who had it. When Riley was airlifted to Seattle Children's Hospital, Darren Detwiler and his wife followed by car.

Darren Detweiler (11:25)

It took us about, I would say, two hours in all to get down to Children's Hospital. And it was a very quiet drive. We got there and we weren't initially able to go in because the doctors weren't ready for us to go in and see him. And we were talking about a full blown pediatric intensive care unit in Children's Hospital. And by the time a doctor and a nurse brought us into that room, you almost couldn't even see him. And he was completely dwarfed by wires and tubes and monitors. And you can't explain that. How do you explain this to a 16 month old? You can't. And I'll never forget when he kind of looked up and he pointed at the IV bag hanging from a pole and he said baba, because in a way with the markings and there was liquid in it, it kind of looked like a bottle. I could see that. And you know, we, we were able to kind of brush his hair a little bit and tell him we're here for him. But they ultimately proceeded to say we need to get him into surgery immediately calling it exploratory surgery and warning us, you know, that the longer they wait, the more damage, you know, could, could take place. And they, they took him in for the surgery. When he came out, he was on a ventilator. And the first thing they did is explain to us how he was medically induced into a coma. And then finally a surgeon came in and explained that they had to remove the majority of his intestines because they were completely destroyed by this pathogen. And we spent the next two to three weeks as we were being explained what every single monitor was and what was being measured and what this number meant and that they wanted this number to go up or they wanted this number to go down or whatever it was, watching them get worse day after day after day. And what started as we're worried about these numbers became a now we're worried about the oxygen deprivation to his brain. And there was a day where they came in and said that there was no turning back in terms of the oxygen deprivation to his brain and that they had already continued beyond what they normally would have in terms of keeping him life support and that essentially he was not going to survive.

Phoebe Judge (14:18)

Darren and his wife consulted as many doctors as they could, but everyone came to the same conclusion. So they agreed to take Riley off life support

Darren Detweiler (14:31)

and the nurses and the doctors removed him from everything and they, they wrapped him up in a blanket and I'll never, ever forget being asked to sit in a rocking chair and having him put into my arms and hold him and I could smell his hair again and hold him tight. And in my eyes and in my mind his chest was rising and falling, but it wasn't.

Phoebe Judge (15:18)

Riley Detwiler died on February 20, 1993, after over 20 days in the hospital. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal Comes from Ritual There are lots of benefits to taking a daily multivitamin. Some people like the routine of doing something small to take care of themselves every day. And you get peace of mind knowing that you might be filling gaps in your nutrition. You get both of those benefits and more with Rituals Essential for Women. It's made with high quality, clean ingredients that are vegan, non gmo, project verified gluten and major allergen free and made traceable. That means you can actually trace where specific ingredients come from through an interactive map on Ritual's website. I like following a very specific morning routine and I take rituals Essential for women, multivitamin and every morning at the same time with breakfast. That way I almost never forget. Instead of striving for perfect health, you can aim to Support foundational health. Save 25% on your first month at ritual.com criminal that's ritual.com criminal for 25% off your first month. Support for Criminal comes from Shopify. If you want to start your own business, you're probably asking yourself questions that start with what if? But no business owner ever figured it all out at once. And those questions are an important step towards launching your business. Shopify can help get you there. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. They're behind everything from household names to brands. Just getting started. You can make a beautiful online store by choosing from Shopify's hundreds of ready to use templates. They can help you write product descriptions, page headlines and improve your product photography. You can connect with customers through an easy to run marketing campaign built through Shopify. And if you just need some advice, they offer award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com criminal go to shopify.com criminal that's shopify.com criminal do. In the same hospital where Riley Detweiler had been treated, a 10 year old named Brianne Kiner had been in the ICU for weeks in a coma with similar symptoms as the other sick kids.

Jeff Benedict (18:04)

Writer Jeff Benedict and from everything that they were seeing with the way that the E Coli had attacked her, unfortunately was that her chances of survival were very low. And the doctors felt like she was one of the ones that they weren't going to be able to save.

Phoebe Judge (18:28)

Here's lawyer, Bill Marler.

Bill Marler (18:30)

You know, I remember the media was covering, you know, day 37 of Brianne Kiner's coma. You know, the doctors were telling the Kiners that there was no hope that they should actually remove her from life support.

Phoebe Judge (18:50)

Brienne's mother Suzanne wanted to speak with her pastor before she signed the forms authorizing the hospital to take Brianne off life support. She left her daughter's room to find a payphone. During her phone conversation, Suzanne heard her name being called on the public address system. And as she was hanging up, doctors ran towards her.

Jeff Benedict (19:14)

Brianne was awake and at the time it was portrayed as a miracle because, you know, from the doctor's perspective, they didn't really have any precedent for this. And granted there hadn't been a lot of cases to look back on, but this was a big abnormality in the, you know, in the outbreak for sure. But the damage to her was, was pretty catastrophic. Like they, they knew at that point that, you know, a couple of her vital organs were, she was, she'd already lost and that there would be things like she'd never be able to have children. I mean, she's a child at this point and you already know things like that, that her physical growth is going to be stunted. She's going to be under medical care for the rest of her life.

Phoebe Judge (20:17)

Brianne's mother Suzanne realized she should get a lawyer. She met with several, including Bill Marler, who came to meet her and Brienne and in the hospital.

Bill Marler (20:27)

She had been, you know, in a hospital bed by then, probably three and a half months. So she was incredibly weak. And you could kind of hardly see her because she was so small and shriveled. I mean, this is, you know, her body was a pin cushion. It was a very. As a father, it was a really frightening experience to see a kid like that. And it was so overwhelming. I just sort of backed up, walked out the door and you know, I was pretty emotional and I wound up still Talking to the Mrs. Kiner afterwards. But I was pretty confident that they weren't going to hire me because how many, you know, how many times you're going to hire a lawyer that breaks into tears?

Phoebe Judge (21:12)

Bill also knew that he didn't have as much experience as some of the other lawyers Suzanne was considering. So he was surprised when she called him and said she wanted to hire him. Suzanne later told Jeff Benedict, quote, I wanted someone who'd come in and spend 15 minutes just absorbing her. Bill was the only one that could look at her. Bill Marler began looking into Brianne's case.

Bill Marler (21:41)

Yeah, I was working up damages. You know, what is the long term impacts of somebody with a no large intestine or who's a diabetic or who was on dialysis for as long as she was or suffered a brain injury. All that had to be put together with complex medical experts who could, you know, opine about what happened to her, but also what the future held for her, which is obviously very complex.

Phoebe Judge (22:13)

Brianne stayed in the hospital for months. She had to have another surgery and had to relearn almost everything. Her colors, how to read, how to walk. Suzanne later told a reporter that Brianne's muscles all over her body had atrophied so much she struggled to chew food. As Bill read about food safety standards, he learned that Jack in the Box had hadn't been the only restaurant that didn't follow the new Washington state cooking temperature rule to cook ground beef to 155 degrees. Most counties in the state weren't enforcing it. There were a number of restaurant inspection reports from the weeks before the outbreak where state health inspectors wrote things like remember to cook to 1:40. Bill sent Jack in the Box's lawyers a formal request for any internal documents that had to do with how the restaurant stored, prepared and cooked its meat.

Bill Marler (23:12)

And I got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of boxes of paper. You know, this was long before the Internet, long before computers, long before, you know, the Ability to do databases. And, you know, a truck rolled up to my office and dumped off literally several hundred boxes of paper. And I think they felt that I never would go through them. And so we started, you know, myself, my staff, the other lawyers, Started going through all the documents, and we started to see things like, you know, we knew that the state of washington had increased cook times, but we didn't know for sure whether or not that information had gotten to jack in the box.

Phoebe Judge (24:05)

Bill spent weeks poring over the documents. While going through the files from their quality assurance department, he found a notice from the washington state department of health describing the new mandatory cooking temperature for beef. According to the date on the document, jack in the box had received it seven months before the outbreak began.

Bill Marler (24:30)

Jack in the box chose to continue to cook their hamburgers at the lower level because increasing the temperature would require increasing the amount of time the hamburger cooked from 2 minutes to 2 minutes and 15 seconds. And that would have made their hamburgers less a fast food. And so they made the decision to essentially ignore the washington state regulation and stick with the nationwide regulation.

Phoebe Judge (25:04)

Bill found something else. Before the outbreak, a jack in the box employee sent a complaint to corporate headquarters. Quote, I think regular patties should cook longer. They don't get done. And we have customer complaints. Jack in the box management replied, quote, we would like to acknowledge the time and effort you have taken to contribute to the success of jack in the box by enclosing this pen.

Jeff Benedict (25:34)

Usually, you don't find smoking guns in these kinds of cases. Bill found basically found two of them.

Phoebe Judge (25:43)

Jack in the box's lawyer was a man named Bob piper. In early 1995, he and Bill met at a hotel in seattle, along with representatives from jack in the box's insurance company, to try and negotiate a settlement for brianne kiner's family.

Jeff Benedict (26:00)

What's interesting about bill is he. He didn't have a lot of experience negotiating. And, you know, the insurance companies have. They have powerful lawyers, and they have a lot of them, and they do settlement stuff all the time. So, again, he's negotiating against or with people that are also older than him, more experienced than him. They're backed by big companies. Bill's kind of out there. He's really kind of on his own. But bill was armed with information. He knew more than they did about every aspect of the case. He knew more about e. Coli. He knew how it worked.

Phoebe Judge (26:46)

At the time, the biggest personal injury settlement in the state was $10 million. Bill was hoping to settle brienne's case for even More in part because he thought Brienne deserved it. And also he wanted the food industry to finally start taking E. Coli and food safety seriously. And he thought this would set a precedent they couldn't ignore. His opening demand was $100 million. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Naturium. Naturium brings a science of consistent skin care to everyone. They believe that skin care should be effective and affordable. Finding the products and routines that are right for you is a process. But Naturium makes it easy. Their formulas are skin friendly, dermatologist tested and made with pH balanced ingredients that are both gentle and effective. So they're great for daily use. And because consistency is key with skincare, Naturium named the rewards program the Consistency Club. You can sign up with no additional cost or subscription and you can even earn points from your empty bottles. One of our producers here at Criminal has been using Naturium's multi peptide moisturizer and says she really likes it. The moisturizer absorbs quickly and leaves the skin feeling soft and smooth. Naturium helps make everything you might find complicated about skin care simpler. With their help, you can give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow it deserves. Visit naturium.com criminal for 10% off the Glow Getter bundle today. That's naturium.com criminal. It's all about you. And when you fly with Virgin Atlantic in their upper class cabin, they take the VIP treatment to the next level. With a private wing to check in and your own security channel at London Heathrow, you can glide from your car to their clubhouse, a destination in its own right, in 10 minutes or less. On board, you can treat yourself to your own private suite to stretch out in with lots of storage space, a lie flat bed and delicious dining from beginning to end. Just be sure to leave room for dessert. Their mile high tea with all the little cakes and sandwiches is a Showstopper. Go to VirginAtlantic.com to learn more. After lawyer Bill Marler made his opening demand of a hundred million dollars, Jack in the Box countered with an offer for $2 million. They went back and forth for a

Bill Marler (29:33)

few days and we got to a point where they had offered $14 million, and that's in 1995, and that's frankly real money back then. And I rejected it. And I remember the mediator thinking of looking at me is like, Mr. Marc, could I talk to you for a moment? And so he was a 65 year old, you know, former federal judge looking at me like, what are you doing? You Idiot. And, you know, it was pretty frightening. So I went back to the room where the kiners were and, you know, talked to them about that. And I just told them they needed to trust me, that. That I would. I was confident that they would come up with more money.

Phoebe Judge (30:32)

Bill told the mediator, the former judge, that he wouldn't accept anything less than $16 million. That night, Bill decided to go directly to Jack in the Box's lawyer, Bob Piper.

Bill Marler (30:45)

And I went to where they were still in their conference room. I knocked on the door and I just. And, like, who is it? I said, bill, like, what the hell you want? And I said, hey, there's this bar in the hotel called Torchy's. I said, I'll meet you at Torchy's. I'll buy cocktails. So, course, you know, this was the 90s. People still did that more often than they do now. And we all met in the. The bar. After a few drinks, some of the insurance guys were yelling at me like. I was like, you're a greedy bastard. And I had my.

Jeff Benedict (31:23)

We.

Bill Marler (31:24)

You know, cell phones. They were much bigger and different than they are today. And my cell phone range, and so I thought it was my wife. And I picked it up and said, hi, honey. And it was the judge. And he says, he goes, where are you? I'm like, I'm in the bar with all the insurance guys. And he was like. He goes, bill, you cannot tell them this. But he goes, I can't get you 16 million, but I can get you 15.6 million. Will you take it?

Phoebe Judge (31:57)

Bill said yes. It was officially the largest personal injury settlement in Washington state history. Why did you push for such a big number?

Bill Marler (32:08)

Primarily because I was. She deserved it. You know, she. She was going to face, you know, lifetime complications and. And a lot of it is you just didn't know what you didn't know. And I had a fear of, like, waking up 20 years from now with Brianne not having enough money and needing it.

Phoebe Judge (32:36)

After graduating from high school, Brianne spent some time working as a clerk for Bill's law practice. Today she's 43, and Bill says she's doing well. In all, over 700 people got sick in the Jack in the Box outbreak. Mostly children. Four kids died. Riley Detweiler was the fourth. Darren Detweiler and his then wife filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jack in the Box's parent company. It was settled in March of 1993 for an undisclosed amount. Darren Detweiler eventually became a food safety expert. He got a doctorate degree in law and policy, focusing on food policy. And he's been called one of America's leading food safety advocates. No criminal charges were ever brought against Jack in the Box management. They paid around $100 million total in settlements to victims following the outbreak. They implemented a new food safety system in all of their restaurants. Their sales had dropped about 30%.

Jeff Benedict (33:50)

Jack in the Box took some. Some pretty aggressive steps in revamping their entire protocol for how they purchased, processed, distributed, and cooked their meat that came out of this case. And, you know, they hired people from the meat industry to come over to their side and work with them and figure out ways to, you know, they'd love to eliminate this kind of thing ever happening again. And so I think that Jack in the Box in the aftermath of this was probably one of the safer places to eat because of what happened in Seattle. And there were a bunch of things that we now take for granted in our food safety experience that were started as a result of this case.

Phoebe Judge (34:48)

Some of Jack in the Box's new food safety protocols were eventually adopted by the federal government. The USDA raised the federal mandatory cooking temperature. Now all states had to cook beef to 155 degrees. And in 1994, E. Coli was officially classified as a contaminant when found in food.

Bill Marler (35:13)

Prior to that, it was completely legal to sell E. Coli contaminated hamburger to the consumer. You could have tested for it, found it, and still sold it.

Phoebe Judge (35:24)

The USDA also implemented new rules for meat processing plants to be more proactive about preventing contamination. Bill Marler kept practicing law and made a niche for himself in food safety law.

Bill Marler (35:41)

Back in the late, you know, in the mid-90s, late-90s, E. Coli outbreaks linked to hamburger and recalls of hamburger were super common occurrences. They were happening all the time. And it just took a while for sort of the cost of that to get absorbed into the system to the point where the system finally just said, okay, we'll fix it. And so they started doing a variety of interventions to make hamburgers safer. They developed a vaccine that is sometimes used by some cattlemen. And essentially what used to be 90 plus percent of my work became, in the early 2000s, just absolutely disappeared. And most of the E. Coli cases that we see now are leafy greens, romaine lettuce. That's kept us, unfortunately, really busy. This pathogen, E. Coli O157, has become an environmental pathogen. It's, you know, it is in the environment, and you see it in outbreaks linked to romaine lettuce and sprouts, and even, you know, flour. And you know, we seldom have E. Coli outbreaks linked to hamburger. We seldom have recalls of hamburger linked to E. Coli. They just don't happen. And, you know, it's one of those rare instances where, you know, humans saw a disaster, did something about it, and it actually has turned out better than you could have expected.

Phoebe Judge (37:32)

Bill Marler has represented thousands of clients over the past 30 years. Cases dealing with E. Coli, salmonella, listeria and hepatitis. Bill often says he begs the food industry to, quote, put me out of business. In our next episode, the story of how a group of young men volunteered to eat food laced with things like formaldehyde, borax and salicylic acid every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and how they paved the way for the first major food safety laws in America. They were called the Poison Squad. Jeff Benedict's book is Poisoned the True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak, the that Changed the Way Americans Eat. We'll have a link in the show Notes Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sagiko, Lily Clark and Lena Sillison. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was fact checked by Katie Cederborg. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them@thisiscriminal.com and you can sign up for our newsletter@thisiscriminal.com Newsletter we hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program Criminal. Plus, you can listen to Criminal, this is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal Cook creator Lauren Sporer talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com criminal we're on Facebook at thisisCriminal and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at YouTube.com criminalpodcast Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows@podcast.voxmedia.com I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho, look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you. And hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up Spring's calling. Ross. Work your magic.