Settlement announced in salmonella outbreak

Clifford Tousignant would have reached a welcomed milestone this week. His birthday was Monday. He would have been 80.

But Tousignant didn't make it to that goal. He was one of three Brainerd residents who died after consuming tainted peanut butter in a nationwide salmonella outbreak last winter.

Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon approved a $12 million settlement for those sickened or killed in the salmonella outbreak traced to Lynchburg, Va.- based Peanut Corp. of America's plants in Georgia and Texas.

Nationwide there were at least nine deaths and 700 illnesses linked to the outbreak, including three in Minnesota. All three were residents of long-term care or assisted living facilities in Brainerd.

Brainerd resident Marshall Tousignant, Clifford's son, said he had hoped Stewart Parnell, the head of the Virginia-based company, would face criminal charges.

"I didn't care about money," Tousignant said. "I wanted to see him go to jail for what he had done. That's what we were after, you know. None of us was after the money."

Clifford Tousignant, 78, a resident of Good Samaritan Society-Bethany in Brainerd; Shirley May Almer, 72, who was from Perham but was a resident of Good Samaritan-Woodland in Brainerd; and Doris Flatgard, 87, a resident of Good Samaritan's Oakwood House in Brainerd, died after contracting salmonella from peanut butter. About 10 other nursing home residents in Brainerd were sickened by salmonella.

Late last year, the Associated Press reported the outbreak was traced to the company's peanut plant in Blakely, Ga., where Food and Drug Administration inspectors found roaches and mold while trying to figure out the source of the salmonella. One e-mail from Parnell said his workers "desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money." In another exchange, he told his plant manager to "turn them loose" after products once deemed contaminated were cleared in a second test.

Peanut Corp. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy to dissolve amid fallout from the outbreak.

Marshall Tousignant still hopes there will be criminal charges, but said he hasn't heard an update on that front for some time. He now lives just a few blocks from where his father was residing and thinks of how easy it would have been to have dinners together now. Tousignant visited his father, a Korean and Vietnam war veteran, several times a day when he was at Bethany.

"He wanted to be 80, that was all he really wanted to do. I remember him saying that time and time again," Tousignant said of his father. "I think he would have made that and surpassed that.

"I miss him. He was a good guy."

The federal judge issued his ruling to pay more than 120 personal injury claims related to the outbreak. The money provided by the company's insurer, Hartford Casualty Insurance Co., will be distributed based on the extent of victims' illnesses. Additional settlement funds are being paid by Kellogg Co.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

RENEE RICHARDSON may be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.