Poisoned

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They started on my V fluids and just sitting there in that hospital, which strangely was across the street from his daycare center. Sitting there with him holding him on my lap for much of this when he was with his IV. There was a sense of, oh, this is going to be fine, we're just going to pump through full of fluids and it'll be fine, but everything escalated so quickly. Riley wasn't getting any better. The doctors decided that he should be airlifted to Seattle Children's Hospital. I wanted to go up to the helicopter pad and they wouldn't, you know, our protocols won't allow this, you know, and I could understand that, believe me, I can understand that. But the craziest thing was that by this time the local news had been notified of this and him being taken on a stretcher on the helicopter pad and loaded onto the helicopter was being covered live on the television. And so his mother and I are still down in his hospital room where the nurses were basically processing us out so we could leave to drive down, it's about an hour and a half drive down to the Children's Hospital. And we turn around and we're watching this being covered live on the local news. And there's my son, he's under a silver space blanket. I could see his face, he's dwarfed by this huge teddy bear, but I could see this tough of hair and I can see his eyes wider than you would ever imagine as he's being loaded onto this helicopter. 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. 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. 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 a 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. 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. 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, 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? Very little. If you took a poll at that time on any public street, in any major city in the U.S. and asked what is E. coli? Most people would just look at you like what? They'd never even heard the term. 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 0157, H7. Back then, there hadn't really been a national outbreak of E. coli. There had 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 scrambling around, but they don't really know what they're dealing with. 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? 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, 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. That's the federal government does that well now. But then those things didn't exist. 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 as CEO, Bob Nugent, was called to Washington, D.C. to testify in front of the Senate. He was a 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 Jack in the box had screwed up. 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. 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. Darren Debtwiler had heard about the outbreak before his 16-month-old son Riley got sick. Their family had 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 Debtwiler and his wife followed by car. It took us about, I would say, two hours and 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 nurse brought us into that room, you almost couldn't even see him. He was completely dwarfed by wires and tubes and monitors. 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's liquid in it, it kind of looked like a bottle. I could see that." And you know, 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 that the longer they wait, the more damage it could take place. And they took him in for the surgery. When he came out, he was on a ventilator. And the first thing they did is explained 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 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 us 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 in life support. And that essentially he was not going to survive. Darin 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. 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. Riley Debtwiler died on February 20th, 1993, after over 20 days in the hospital. We'll be right back. Support for criminal comes from Net Suite. Making sure your business keeps up with the competition can be complicated. Net Suite Next can make things simple. Net Suite is the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data. It's trusted by over 43,000 customers. Net Suite Next is the next big leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. 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Quince also has premium stretch denim, starting at just $50, with the kind of perfect fit structure and weight you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. I think there are organic cotton cable cardigan will be perfect for fall. It looks warm and comfortable, and is easy to layer with other items, as the temperature starts to change. Upgrade your every day. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to Quince.com/Criminal. You can get free shipping on your order in 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com/Criminal. In the same hospital where Riley Debtwiler had been treated, a ten-year-old named Brienne Kiner had been in the ICU for weeks in Akoma with similar symptoms as the other sick kids. 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. Here's lawyer Bill Marlar. I remember the media was covering day 37 of Brienne Kiner's coma. The doctors were telling the Kiner's that there was no hope that they should actually remove her from life support. Brienne's mother, Suzanne, wanted to speak with her pastor before she signed the forms, authorizing the hospital to take Brienne off life support. She left her daughter's room to find a pay phone. 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. Brienne was awake. And at the time, it was portrayed as a miracle. Because 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 outbreak, for sure. But the damage to her was pretty catastrophic. They knew at that point that a couple of her vital organs were, she'd already lost, and that there would be things like she'd never be able to have children. 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. Brienne's mother, Suzanne, realized she should get a lawyer. She met with several, including Bill Marlar, who came to meet her in Breanne in the hospital. She'd been 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 pincushion. It was a very, now he has that 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. Bill also knew that he didn't have as much experience as some of the other lawyers, Suzan was considering. So he was surprised when she called him and said she wanted to hire him. Suzan later told Jeff Benedict, quote, "I wanted someone who would come in and spend 15 minutes just absorbing her." Bill was the only one that could look at her. Bill Marlar began looking into Breanne's case. Yeah, I was working up damages, you know, what is the long-term impacts of somebody with no large intestine or who's a diabetic or who is 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 was obviously very complex. Breanne 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. Suzan later told her reporter that Breanne'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 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 140. Bill sent Jack in the boxes lawyers a formal request for any internal documents that had to do with how the restaurant stored, prepared, and cooked its meat. 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. Bill spent weeks pouring 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 data on the document, Jack in the box had received it seven months before the outbreak began. 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 two minutes to two minutes and fifteen 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. 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, "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." Usually you don't find smoking guns in these kinds of cases. Bill found, basically found two of them. 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 Brienne Kiner's family. What's interesting about Bill is he didn't have a lot of experience negotiating. And you know the insurance companies have they have powerful lawyers and and they have a lot of them and they do settlement stuff all the time. So again he's he's negotiating against or with people that are also older than him or experiencing 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. You know he he knew more than they did. About every aspect of the case he knew more about E. coli. He knew how it worked. 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 Mintmobile. If you're looking for ways to save money this summer then you can start by lowering some of your expensive monthly bills like your phone bill. Mint mobile can help. Right now all of Mint's plans are only $15 per month. All of their plans come with high speed 5G data and unlimited talk in text. We have a friend who switched Mintmobile and says he's saving money every month since he made the change. To get your new wireless plan for just $15 a month go to Mintmobile.com/phibi. That's Mintmobile.com/phibi. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at Mintmobile.com/phibi. That's it. There's no catch. Upfront payment of $45 for three month, $90 for six month, or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabytes hotspot, capable device required, availability speed and coverage varies. See Mintmobile.com. Support for criminal comes from Shopify. When you're ready to start your new business, Shopify can help. It has everything you need to start selling from day one. The moment your first customer is ready to pay, Shopify checkout helps them finish their purchase. And when they come back, their details are already saved. One tap and they're done. Because the hard part should be coming up with a great business idea. Not making a sale. And with Shopify handling the setup and check out you have more time for the important things. Whether that's planning your next campaign or developing your newest product. With Shopify, you'll be on the same platform that powers some of the biggest names in the game, like Mattel and Jim Shark. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/Criminal. That's Shopify.com/Criminal for your free trial. After lawyer Bill Marlar made his opening demand of $100 million, Jack in the box countered with an offer for $2 million. They went back and forth for a 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. Marlar, Bill, can 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 Kiner's were and, you know, talked to them about that. And I just told them they needed to trust me that I was confident that they would come up with more money. - 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 boxes, lawyer, Bob Piper. - 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 "Torchies," I said, "I'll meet you at Torchies. I'll buy cocktails." So, of course, you know, this was the '90s. People still did that more often than they do now. And we all met in the bar after a few drinks. Some of the insurance guys were yelling at me like I was like, "You're a greedy bastard, rabah, rabah, rabah." And I had my, you know, cell phones. They were much bigger and different than they are today. And my cell phone rang. And so I thought it was my wife when I picked up and said, "Hi, honey." And it was at 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 goes, "Bill, you cannot tell of them this." But he goes, "I can't get you $16 million, but I can get you $15.6 million." Will you take it? - Bill said yes. - It was officially the largest personal injury settlement in Washington State history. - Why did you push for such a big number? - Primarily because I was, she deserved it. You know, she was gonna face, you know, lifetime complications. 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 Brienne not having enough money and needing it. - After graduating from high school, Brienne 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 and the jack-in-the-box outbreak, mostly children. Four kids died. Riley Debtwiler was the fourth. Darren Debtwiler and his then-wife filed a wrongful debt lawsuit against Jack in the Box's parent company. It was settled in March of 1993 for an undisclosed amount. Darren Debtwiler 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 wherever 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%. Jack-in-the-box took 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 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. 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 one found in food. 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. 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. Back 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 hamburger 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 0157, 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, flower. 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. Bill Marlar 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 change the way Americans eat. We'll have a link in the show notes. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, and Lena Silicin. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Seminetti. This episode was fact check by Katie Cedarborg. Julie Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of criminal. You can see them at ThisIsCriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at 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 Feb. E. Smithtry without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal Co-Creator Lauren Spore, 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, an Instagram and TikTok at Criminal_Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the VOX Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [BLANK_AUDIO]