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 Robert Hubner
In 1996, just as the Jack in the Box
suits were winding down, a new toxic food case emerged.
Odwalla, a California-based company that billed its products as
nourishing for the body as well as good for the earth, had sold
fresh apple juice tainted with E. coli, the same deadly
strain that nearly killed Brianne Kiner. The bacterium was traced
to contaminated apples that had been collected off the ground. A
16-month old child died, and 70 adults and children were sickened.
Marler's phone started ringing. He thought Odwalla would take a
lesson from Jack in the Box and mediate quick settlements instead
of suffering the negative publicity of a lengthy dispute. He was
wrong. The company and its attorneys wanted to fight, says Dennis
Stearns, who met Marler through the Jack in the Box case. Marler
had moved to a third firm, and his partners had no experience in
food-borne illness, nor had they the interest in investing firm
resources in it. Marler needed someone sharp like Stearns who knew
the field and would share the burdens of research, brief writing,
and fighting the case. Their joint efforts on Odwalla led to the
idea of creating their own firm, one that focused on food
cases.
In 1998, when Odwalla wrapped up, bringing about $12 million to
the families of three small children who were poisoned, Marler and
Stearns were itching to go into business for themselves. They
brought Bruce Clark to their team and launched Marler Clark. Their
mission: to be the nation's leading law firm litigating food-borne
illness cases.
They struggled through a lean first year. Food-borne illness was
still a fairly new field. Marler had to write personal checks to
the firm so the staff could be paid and the partners could cover
their mortgages. He took on a variety of personal-injury suits to
cover the bills. "It was scary," says Stearns. "We had a pretty
good book of business, but the nature of this business is you don't
get paid until a case settles." That first year they won a $4.6
million settlement against the Finley School District in the
Tri-Cities, where 11 elementary school children contracted E.
coli from undercooked taco meat. But the bulk of the award
didn't come until 2003, when the school district finally exhausted
its means of appeal.
Nowadays, business is booming. Marler points to the latest
outbreaks of E. coli in fresh spinach, which has been linked
to five deaths and more than 200 illnesses, and Salmonella
in peanut butter, which affected more than 400 people in 44 states.
Marler's days are a lot like early Jack in the Box-so busy, so many
victims.
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