The suit against ConAgra Foods Inc. was filed by Christopher Butts and two other men who had been inmates in Vermont but were sent to a Kentucky prison because of Vermont overcrowding.
Butts - who served four years for a fatal drunken-driving crash - claimed that while he was in the Kentucky prison three years ago he bit into a piece of microwaved chicken bought at a prison store that contained pus and the animal's digestive tract.
Butts says he got sick and can no longer eat chicken.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions III in Burlington, Vt., ruled Monday that they failed to prove that the product was defective.
