Pa. prison salmonella outbreak sickened 300

Following reports of a massive salmonella outbreak at Pennsylvania's U.S. Penitentiary-Canaan, Marler Clark attorneys received calls from families of inmates reporting that hundreds were sick after eating tainted chicken fajitas. Officials confirmed that more than 300 inmates and staff fell ill from contaminated chicken served on June 25, with four inmates hospitalized for dehydration. Attorneys Bill Marler and Claire Mitchell investigated the claims, though it remained "too early to determine if any lawsuits will be filed." The outbreak highlighted ongoing food safety challenges in institutional settings where wholesale food is prepared on-site. Prison officials closed the kitchen as a precaution during the investigation, though they couldn't comment on supplier details or where contamination occurred in the supply chain. The incident added to Marler Clark's extensive Pennsylvania food safety work, which includes representing over 400 customers sickened by salmonella-tainted tomatoes at Sheetz stores in 2004, and successfully resolving 78 claims from the 2003 Chi-Chi's hepatitis A outbreak—the largest single-source hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history that killed three people and sickened at least 660. That case resulted in a $6.25 million settlement for one victim requiring a liver transplant, plus an $800,000 settlement split among 4,500 people who received preventive immune globulin shots.