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.
Salmonella is a potentially fatal bacterium that is found on about 20 percent of harvested peanuts. The outbreak that led to the 2007 recall was not the first instance of a salmonella infestation in a batch of Peter Pan peanut butter for the ConAgra Foods company.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.
