March 2 1995 – A Washington state court approved the settlement of a lawsuit under which a 12-year-old girl who nearly died after eating a tainted hamburger will get $ 15.6 million. Under the settlement Foodmaker Inc., operator of Jack-in-the-Box restaurants, meat processor Von Stores Inc. and various slaughterhouses will pay the sum to Brianne Kiner, said her lawyer, William Marler.

Kiner, who fell into a 42-day coma after eating a hamburger at a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant in January 1993, was the most seriously affected survivor of meat tainted with the e. coli bacteria that killed three children and sickened some 500 people in the Seattle area in 1992 and 1993.

Doctors gave Kiner no chance to survive when she fell into the coma. They urged her family several times to disconnect life-support machines that were keeping her alive, Marler said. But she awoke from the coma and was released from the hospital in June 1993. She has become an insulin-dependent diabetic whose kidneys are likely to fail during her life; her large intestine had to be removed, and a stroke she suffered during her coma has left her with “some cognitive impairment,” Marler said.

Insurers for Foodmaker and the meat processing companies have paid out more than $ 100 million to settle about 95 percent of the lawsuits stemming from the E. coli cases, Marler said.

Kiner from Marlerclark on Vimeo.