Tyson Foods ordered to pay $13 million in wrongful death suit against Hillshire Brands

A California jury recently sought wrongful death awards of roughly $13 million from Tyson Foods / Hillshire Brands relating to a sugar refinery Hillshire owned until 1986. The case heard in California’s Superior Court was brought by the family of Mark Lopez, who lived in housing owned by Hillshire adjacent to the Union City Sugar Refinery when he was a child.

Lopez recently died from mesothelioma at the age of 61 and the family sought financial retribution from Hillshire because the plant it owned and the surrounding housing area were contaminated with asbestos, according to court testimony.

Tyson Foods said it will seek reversal on appeal of the recent wrongful death suit.

“Our sympathies are with the Lopez family but we do not believe the death of Mark Lopez was caused by anything that may have occurred at the Union Sugar plant in the 1960s or ’70s. The Union Sugar facility was sold to another company in 1986, more than 28 years before Tyson Foods purchased Hillshire Brands in 2014,” Tyson spokeswoman Caroline Ahn told Talk Business & Politics.