Last Family Settles With Jack-In-The-Box

The family of a toddler who fell ill in 1993 after his parents ate at a Jack-in-the-Box has reached a $4.375 million settlement with the restaurant chain’s parent company.

Tyler Peterson of Snohomish was among several hundred people who became ill in January 1993 from an outbreak of E. coli bacteria linked to contaminated and undercooked hamburgers at Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. Three children in Washington died in the outbreak.

Tyler, then 2-1/2, didn’t eat a hamburger but became infected through one of his parents, Rick Peterson and Michele Barker, who did, said Kirk Portmann, one of the Seattle lawyers who filed a classaction suit in the case.

Tyler was hospitalized and developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a kidney ailment.

“He’s doing fine now. The main area of concern is what’s going to happen in the future,” Portmann said. Tyler’s family was the last member of the class-action lawsuit to settle.