If they don’t want me to sue them, they shouldn’t poison children.” —BILL MARLER
$100,000 to start a scholarship in his honor to promote food safety. WHY FOOD SAFETY? It’s another illustration of Marl- er’s legal career having a decidedly personal dynamic. Indeed, it was a personal connection that led him to focus on food-safety litigation. Marler was in his mid-30s and working at a large law firm in the Pacific Northwest when he read a newspaper account of children getting direly sick from a bacteria called E.coli. “I didn’t know what E.coli was,” he recalls. The bacteria had been found in burgers served by the Jack in the Box fast-food chain. Eventually, 732 people would be sickened in the outbreak, and four children would die. Neither he nor his firm had any direct connection to the outbreak. But Marler received a call from someone he’d represented earlier in a slip-and-fall workmen’s comp case involving a local Lincoln car dealership. “She called me because a good friend of hers had a kid in the hos- pital who was very sick from E.coli, and the friend didn’t know what to do,” Marler recounts. The child turned out to be 9-year-old Brianne Kiner, who was in a coma because her internal or- gans were failing. Marler, who found he loved liti- gating, took on the case. He ended up winning Kiner a $15.6 million settlement. Other victims started contacting him, hoping he could similarly help them. Marler ended up represent- ing about 100 of the other casual- ties. “I basically became the lead lawyer for all the Jack in the Box liti- gation,” he says. He was still handling other sorts
of liability cases, but soon concen- trated on food safety, eventual- ly founding his own firm, Marler Clark, whose practice was virtually 100% focused on contaminations. He hems and haws a bit when asked why he decided to specialize in that sort of legal work. The mon- ey was good, but “I have never tak- en a full fee on a case in 31 years,” says Marler. He works on contin- gency, meaning he gets nothing if he doesn’t prevail, and a big propor- tion of the cases end in a settlement, of which he gets a portion. He’s been known to waive his fee altogether when that settlement seems paltry for what his client suf- fered. His work as a crusader for food safety has often met with cynicism, but he suggests he’s aged out of car- ing. “I’ve loved being a lawyer,” he says. “I wish I could ratchet every- thing back 31 years and start over, because I love what I’m doing.” Besides, there’s still much to be done in ensuring the food industry does what it’s supposed to do to pro- tect the public. “I have never been involved in an outbreak where there wasn’t an op- portunity to fix the problem before it blew up,” says Marler. “I always tell the industry, Get food-safety people in positions where they have access to decision-makers in your company, and that you’re paying attention to science, you’re paying attention to facts, and not trying to avoid a problem. “Make sure you don’t have to carry around a picture of Lauren Rudolph and have to ask, ‘What would Lauren want me to do?’” Correction: The $1 billion Marl- er Clark has collected has collect- ed came from verdicts and settle- ments, not fees. The firm works on a contingency basis.
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JANUARY 2025 RESTAURANT BUSINESS
ILLUSTRATION BY DIMITRI MORSON/MIDJOURNEY
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