A Bug in the System

Wil S. Hylton chronicles how Bill Marler became "the most prominent and powerful food-safety attorney in the country" through the lens of the devastating 2013 Foster Farms Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak that sickened 621 reported cases—likely 18,000 actual victims—including Rick Schiller, whose leg swelled to three times normal size and turned "bright purple." The profile traces Marler's evolution from the 1993 Jack in the Box case, where he spent nights sifting through fifty cardboard boxes of discovery and turned down multimillion-dollar offers to demand $100 million—ultimately securing over $50 million including $15.6 million for Brianne Kiner. That public outrage prompted Mike Taylor's landmark 1994 decision declaring E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant, the first food-borne microbe ever given that designation. Twenty years later, Marler operates from a 28th-floor Seattle office in damp gym clothes after ferry walks, having won over $600 million while funding Food Safety News ($250,000 annually) and fighting regulatory paralysis. "If you're allowing the product to become contaminated, having more or less inspectors is beside the point," he states, challenging the USDA's rejection of declaring dangerous Salmonella strains adulterants. The piece captures his transformation: "In the early days, Bill was just on a mission to sue large food companies," says former FDA official David Acheson. "But I think during the course of that he realized that there are problems with the food-safety system."