Jack In The Box Settles E. Coli Suit For $19,000

The parent company of Jack in the Box is paying $19,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a Canadian boy who got sick after eating a cheeseburger, court records show.

In the settlement reached Thursday, parent company Foodmaker Inc. of San Diego and Seabest Food Services, doing business at the time as Jack in the Box, did not admit responsibility for the illness of David Balfour, 10, of Richmond, British Columbia, said Jeff Thigpen, the boy’s lawyer.

According to documents filed in Whatcom County Superior Court, Balfour became seriously ill within days after he ate a cheeseburger from a Jack in the Box outlet in Bellingham on Jan. 19, 1993, when he was 7 years old. He was not hospitalized but missed nearly a month of school.

“It is … beyond dispute that the E. coli bacteria which infected David entered his intestinal system because the cheeseburger he ate was contaminated with the bacteria,” Thigpen asserted in court papers.