$70 Million Verdict for Boat Repairman With Flesh-Eating Infection After Chicken Waste Spill Into River

In June 2019 a temporary pipe system at the Tyson Farms rendering facility in Hanceville, Alabama failed. The pipe had been rented from HydraService, Inc., which also maintained it.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management put the volume that escaped at roughly 220,000 gallons of chicken rendering wastewater: heads, beaks, blood, bones, intestines. It went into the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior River.

The Mulberry Fork is not an incidental waterway. It flows into the Black Warrior and is the primary source of drinking water for much of Walker County, drawn and processed at the Laye-Williams Water Treatment Plant. Fish died in numbers.

Mark Griffin, of Dora, was a boat repairman. His work put him in and around that water. He began feeling ill shortly after the spill, and after rounds of treatment and testing his doctors diagnosed necrotizing fasciitis, the soft-tissue infection usually described in plain language as flesh-eating bacteria.

He filed suit in 2020 against Tyson Farms and HydraService. The case took nearly six years and ended in a four-week trial with testimony from more than a dozen witnesses. Court records document the surgical and medical treatment he went through across those years, and one of his lawyers told WBRC that Griffin still lives with a bone infection and an open wound.

On March 27, 2026, the Walker County jury found for him on two different theories against two different defendants: wantonness against Tyson Farms, and negligence against HydraService. It awarded $70 million.

The verdict is the largest in Walker County's history. The record it broke was $10 million, set in a 2017 medical malpractice case tried by the same two firms.

One piece of context the jury did not need but a reader should have: the 2019 spill was the fourth at the Hanceville facility since 2011. An earlier round led to a $3 million settlement with the State of Alabama that required the company to take steps against a recurrence.

Tyson Foods, which owns Tyson Farms, said it respects the jury's decision and is disappointed in the outcome, that the evidence at trial showed the June 2019 incident did not cause Griffin's injuries, and that it extends sympathy to him for the injuries he sustained. It noted that it acquired the Hanceville facility in August 2018 and has since installed permanent underground piping and air scrubbers there.

Griffin was represented by Josh Vick and Dennis Goldasich, then of Goldasich, Vick and Fulk and now Goldasich, Vick and McCartney, with Bob Bryan and Clay Boylen of Nelson, Bryan, Boylen and Cross in Jasper as co-counsel.