For more than three years, three Vermont felons suing ConAgra Foods in a food-poisoning case had stored allegedly contaminated pieces of the company's Banquet frozen chicken. But the bird evidence didn't fly as a judge cleared ConAgra of all liability.

When the plaintiffs ate the chicken in November 2005 while serving time in a Kentucky prison, it allegedly contained poultry entrails that caused Christopher Butts to become violently ill. He sued ConAgra, joined by two other inmates –- Corydon Cochran and Henry Butson –- who claimed to have suffered emotional injuries as a result of sharing the chicken with him.

The plaintiffs stored the remaining chicken in a cooler and brought it in a paper bag to a Burlington, Vt., courtroom last week for a bench trial of their products-liability claims in which they represented themselves. They were seeking at least $100,000 in damages.

But Chief U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions ruled the chicken inadmissible and, in a Jan. 9 opinion, granted a defense judgment.

“One impediment to admitting the chicken into evidence was the chain of custody,” he noted. “The plaintiffs reported that since 2005, the chicken was primarily in the possession of their 'legal aid,' former plaintiff and fellow inmate Byron Martin. Martin did not appear at trial.”

According to the complaint, Butts bought the chicken from the store at the Lee Adjustment Facility in Beattyville, Ky., where Vermont sends inmates to relieve prison overcrowding. After thawing it out, he heated it up in a microwave the next day and invited Cochran and Butson to eat it with him.

“We found, to our Horror,” the suit says, “the most vile portion of the chicken –- chicken Feces, the excrement of the body of the chicken replete with the whole intestinal track [sic] from the throat of the chicken to the very sphincter muscle, the butt-end.”

Butts said he became ill shortly after eating the chicken, vomiting and experiencing diarrhea, but Cochran, who had not noticed anything unusual, forced himself to vomit for fear of contracting a disease. Butson claimed his chicken had “like a whole clam taste and texture.”

In his ruling on ConAgra's motion for judgment, Sessions repeatedly referred to the chicken -– which was listed as a trial exhibit -- not being admitted into evidence and concluded that “While Butts may have eaten something other than chicken meat, the evidence did not establish that the contents of the chicken box were harmful in any way.”

“Only Butts became sick, but he admitted that his sickness may have been psychosomatic,” he said.

The judge also ruled that Cochran and Butson could not recover emotional distress damages without any physical injury. "Frankly, the only injury you sustained was a phobia of seeing chicken?" ConAgra attorney Gary N. Stewart asked Butson during the trial.

Butson, a double murderer, is the only one of the plaintiffs still behind bars. Martin allegedly witnessed the “terrible ordeal” of his chicken-eating fellow inmates and also acted as a jailhouse lawyer for Butts, signing court papers on his behalf until Sessions ordered him to stop doing so.

By Matthew Heller
1/14/09