By William Morris, Des Moines Register
AI-assisted summary
- The Iowa Supreme Court rules that families of Iowa Tyson Foods workers who died from COVID-19 can sue company officials
- The ruling reverses a lower court decision that limited families to workers’ compensation claims
- The court found sufficient evidence of officials knowing the virus’s danger and consciously failing to avoid it.
The families of several workers who died of COVID-19 complications early in the pandemic can continue to pursue their lawsuits against meatpacking giant Tyson Foods, the Iowa Supreme Court has ruled.
Survivors of the four employees — Sedika Buljic, Isidro Fernandez, Reberiano Leno Garcia and Jose Ayala — sued the company, executives and supervisors, accusing them of gross negligence and fraud in their response to COVID. The company’s Waterloo plant was the site of one of the largest reported workplace outbreaks in the country, with more than 1,000 workers sickened and at least seven dead.
A district court previously dismissed the suit, ruling that the families can only pursue claims against Tyson through the state workers’ compensation system. That would greatly limit the maximum compensation available to the families on their claims.
The unanimous Supreme Court ruling Friday, May 23, reverses part of the district court’s decision, allowing the families to continue to sue about a dozen current and former Tyson officials. The justices did rule that the families cannot sue the actual Tyson company, which reported an $822 million profit last year.
Contributed/he Iowa League Of United Latin American Citizens
The Supreme Court’s decision will affect more than a dozen other cases filed by the families of dead workers at Tyson and Brazilian-owned meatpacker JBS, which has plants in Marshalltown and Ottumwa. Some of those cases had been dismissed when the district ruled the families would have to use the workers’ compensation system. Other judges paused cases, waiting for the Supreme Court decision in the appeal.
Attorneys for Tyson and the company officials named in the suits did not respond to requests for comment Friday. Attorney Mel Orchard, who represents the workers’ families, praised the Supreme Court.
“We are just grateful that we have a judicial system that recognizes that workers’ lives are as important as anyone else’s, in terms of the value they bring home every night to their families,” he said in an email. “Tyson has a lot to answer for, and this is just the beginning. Sadly, it has taken many years just to get back to the beginning. But justice has an awe inspiring way of winning the long game.”
What happened at the Waterloo Tyson plant?
As COVID swept across the country, the plaintiffs allege, Tyson executives tracked the number of Waterloo workers reporting symptoms of the coronavirus, peaking in late April 2020, when on one day 656 workers called in sick.
Executives instructed office employees to work from home as the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States increased that spring. But managers kept the pig-butchering lines running at full capacity in Waterloo, where workers were packed in shoulder to shoulder.
Employees, including those with symptoms of the illness, were told to keep working until they received a positive COVID-19 test. Even some workers who tested positive remained on the production lines, near other employees, and were not given or required to wear masks or other protective equipment.
Contributed/Iowa League Of United Latin American Citizens
The plaintiffs accuse managers of lying to workers, falsely claiming the factory had been “cleared” by the Black Hawk County Heath Department, and denying in public statements there was a COVID outbreak inside the plant. Tyson executives did not close the plant until after state and local officials pressured them multiple times.
When the company tested workers during the shutdown, supervisors placed bets on how many employees would be found to have the virus. Some supervisors have said they were betting because they were confident that the infection rate would be lower than that of Black Hawk County overall, arguing that they did a good job protecting the employees. Those supervisors, some of whom are now being sued by the families, were later fired once the betting pool came to light, leading to further litigation.
About 42% of Tyson employees in Waterloo tested positive for the virus, a company attorney later disclosed to a Congressional oversight committee — far more than the community’s prevailing rate. Another Tyson plant in Columbus Junction in April 2020 accounted for almost half of the new COVID cases in the state.
Plaintiffs adequately claim gross negligence, Supreme Court finds
After unsuccessfully claiming that an order from President Donald Trump to keep processing lines running to ensure the nation’s meat supply gave Tyson immunity from lawsuits, company attorneys returned to Iowa district court to ask a judge to dismiss all claims. The judge did.
The district court faulted the families for “lumping together” Tyson officials without stating which ones had been responsible for specific wrongful actions. Because the families failed to show that the individual officials “had actual knowledge of the peril,” the court said, the families had not proved those officials committed gross negligence — a legal bar the families needed to seek to clear to avoid having to pursue their cases in the workers’ compensation system.
The district court judge also rejected the families’ claims that the officials committed “fraudulent misrepresentation.”
The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday disagreed. Justice Matthew McDermott wrote that the families could group the Tyson officials together in the lawsuit for simplicity. He added that the lawsuit is clear enough for the defendants to know what the families have accused them of.
Lily Smith/The Register
McDermott wrote that families also cleared the legal hurdle of showing gross negligence. They needed to show that the Tyson officials knew about the danger of the virus, knew that the danger was “probable, as opposed to possible,” he wrote, and consciously failed to avoid the danger, despite that.
The families met each threshold, McDermott wrote. They alleged that Tyson employees at Waterloo regularly received briefings about the virus. They alleged that the officials knew the virus was highly transmissible, and in fact, avoided the plant floor to protect themselves.
They also alleged that the officials failed to prevent the danger when they canceled safety briefings, lied to company interpreters who communicated their messages to the immigrant-heavy workforce and required employees to keep working after showing signs of infection.
“The petition adequately asserts that the defendants showed a conscious failure to avoid the peril,” McDermott wrote.
The Supreme Court also revived the families’ claim that the plant supervisors committed fraudulent misrepresentation. The justices did not, however, allow the families to pursue that claim against the company itself.
In addition, the justices considered Iowa’s Back-to-Business Act, which shields companies sued over their handling of COVID-19 concerns. The law includes an exception if an employer “recklessly disregards a substantial and unnecessary risk” of exposure.
Even if that law is applicable in the case against Tyson, McDermott wrote, the families have sufficiently alleged reckless disregard by company officials.
The surviving claims will go back to district court for further proceedings. The case is likely to see extensive additional litigation before going to trial.
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