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Juries Award Higher Amounts for Severe Foodborne Illnesses
Corbis
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U.S. food firms have a variety of incentives to produce safe products.
Firms risk losing sales and reputation if consumers become concerned
about the safety of the firms’ products. Firms that violate
Federal, State, or local food safety laws or regulations may face
fines, recalls, or plant closures. And, finally, firms responsible
for contaminated food products that make people ill can be sued
by the people or their families. Many food poisoning lawsuits are
settled out of court, and there is limited information on these
settlements because of confidentiality provisions. Thus, the effectiveness
of litigation in providing firms with incentives to produce safer
food products has been
largely unstudied.
To address this research void, ERS researchers analyzed a sample
of 175 foodborne illness lawsuits resolved in court during 1988-97.
Verdicts and award amounts in court cases are a matter of public
record. The researchers found that less than a third of plaintiffs
(55 cases) won compensation for their foodborne illness from food
processors, restaurants, or other food firms. The “expected
award”—the average compensation including the cases
in which plaintiffs lost as well as won—granted by juries
to plaintiffs in such trials was $41,888.
Injury severity is a major factor affecting an expected award.
ERS researchers divided the 175 court cases into three severity
categories: 6 cases involved a premature death, 60 cases involved
nonfatal injuries severe enough to require hospitalization, and
109 cases involved less severe illnesses.
The expected award for a lawsuit that claimed a premature death
as a result of a food poisoning was $183,053, far higher than the
expected awards for nonfatal illnesses. However, the award distribution
was highly skewed, with the two largest awards accounting for 51
percent of the $7.3 million total awarded in the 55 plaintiff victories.
Thus, even if plaintiffs win compensation, they will likely receive
less compensation than these estimates. The median award for the
55 plaintiff victories was $25,560.
Cases of severe food poisoning are more
often won by plaintiffs and carry higher awards
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Illness severity |
Court cases during 1988-97
with award information
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Percent won by plaintiff
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Expected award per case
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Number
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Percent
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1998 dollars
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Premature death
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6
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66.7
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183,053
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Hospitalized & survived
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60
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31.7
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44,713
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Other cases
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109
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29.4
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32,563
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Total |
175
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31.4
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41,888
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This article is drawn from...
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Product Liability and Microbial Foodborne
Illness, by Jean C. Buzby,
Paul D. Frenzen, and Barbara Rasco, AER-799, USDA/ERS, April 2001.
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