Campylobacter Lawyers

Pritzker Hageman Campylobacter Lawyers Win Money Settlements

The Pritzker Hageman Campylobacter lawyers have won millions for people sickened by contaminated food.

Studies have shown that most Campylobacter outbreaks are linked to restaurants or to raw milk, as seen in one of our recent cases, where our lawyers represented a man who was paralyzed after drinking contaminated raw milk.

This client’s Campylobacter infection developed into a rare neurological disorder called Guillain-Barrè syndrome (GBS). Our lawyers sued a dairy and grocery store, winning a multimillion-dollar settlement for our client and his wife.

Recent Campylobacter Investigations

Rediviva Restaurant – Aberdeen, Washington

Contaminated chicken liver served at Rediviva restaurant on February 26th, 2020 has been linked to a suspected 25 cases of Campylobacter poisoning.

Swan Brothers Raw Milk – Oklahoma

Raw milk (milk that has not undergone pasteurization) sold by Claremore, Oklahoma-based Swan Brothers Dairy has been linked to multiple cases of Campylobacter since April 9th, 2020.

What is Campylobacter?

Campylobacter is the name of a genus of a spiral-shaped bacteria found primarily in the intestines of birds–especially poultry–and other animals. Many birds can carry these bacteria without becoming ill. It is estimated that nearly half of all chicken meat in the U.S. has some of this bacteria on it. Untreated water can also be contaminated by animal or human feces.

This bacteria causes campylobacteriosis, which is characterized by diarrheal illness (gastroenteritis), usually accompanied by fever, and abdominal cramps. In rare cases, the patient can develop Guillain-Barré syndrome, a severe illness that can lead to paralysis and death.

Fortunately, this pathogen has difficulty surviving when exposed to air. Since Campylobacter bacteria require low levels of oxygen to thrive, many infections are prevented by exposing contaminated surfaces to fresh air.

The bacteria’s fragility is not only characterized by its intolerance for oxygen; but it can also be killed by drying, heating, disinfectants, and acidic conditions. However, only a relatively small number of organisms–as few as 500–can cause an infection in humans. One drop of contaminated raw chicken juice would be enough to infect someone.

Campylobacter Symptoms

Symptoms occur from 1 to 10 days after infection. The first ones to appear are:

• Muscle Pain
• Headache
• Fever

These symptoms are followed by:

• Watery or Bloody Diarrhea
• Abdominal Pain
• Nausea

The first symptoms usually appear two to five days after the initial infection. The illness usually only lasts a week to ten days, but relapses several days later occur in as many as one in four of all cases.

Complications

Risks and serious complications include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Arthritis
• Blood poisoning
• Meningitis
• Heart attack
• Hemolytic uremic syndrome
• Guillain-Barrè syndrome (GBS)
• Respiratory distress
• Gall bladder inflammation
• Severe dehydration

Our Campylobacter Lawyers Will Protect Your Legal Rights

To protect your legal rights, it is important that you are diagnosed with Campylobacter and that further testing is done to get a genetic fingerprint of the specific bacteria that made you sick. This is done with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and whole-genome sequencing (WGS).

A clinical diagnosis requires laboratory testing of a stool sample. Because these bacteria only survive and proliferate under specific conditions, isolating the organism from a stool sample is difficult, but most labs are able to test for it.

Usually, a working diagnosis is based on the symptoms of diarrheal illness and the time of onset, as well as the length of the illness. The symptoms most doctors look for are diarrhea, abdominal cramps, fever, and a headache lasting for about a week.