Iowa court finds Tyson Foods’ execs could be liable for COVID deaths 

Where does the buck stop? That’s the question for courts to determine between present and past Tyson Foods execs and the survivors of former employees who died from their exposure to COVID-19 in the company’s Iowa meat plants.

A recent ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that prohibited the families of the deceased workers from suing Tyson Foods and certain members of management for allegedly being negligent in pandemic safety operations. The court affirmed the dismissal of the case against Tyson Foods, the company, and two of the named defendants — Debra Adams, associate director of occupational health at Tyson Fresh Meats, and Mary Jones, occupational nurse. However, the high court reversed the lower court decision that protected the other named Tyson executives from liability.

The reversal allows the surviving estates of Hus Hari Buljic, Sedika Buljic, Honario Garcia, Reberiano Leno Garcia, and Jose Ayala to pursue named Tyson executives in gross negligence and fraud-related complaints.

The named defendants who still face liability claims for the deaths include: Tyson Board Chairman John Tyson; Noel White, former CEO and now board member; Dean Banks, former president of Tyson Foods and no longer with the company; Stephen Stouffer, president of Tyson Fresh Meats; Tom Brower, senior vice president of health and safety; and Doug White, corporate safety manager at Tyson Fresh Meats.

Supervisors, including Tom Hart at the Waterloo, Iowa, pork plant; James Hook, human resources director; and plant managers Cody Brustkern, John Casey, and Bret Tapken could face additional litigation from the defendants.

Tyson Foods did not respond to a request for comment. The company has previously argued that the company was shielded from liability because it complied with President Donald Trump’s executive order that required food processing plants to remain open during the early days of the pandemic. A state law enacted in Iowa also provided liability protection for Tyson Foods so long as it followed safety protocols outlined by health officials.

The plaintiffs argued that plant management, at the direction of corporate leadership, ignored health and safety protocols like requiring social distancing and requiring employees with symptoms to work until a test confirmed their infection. The Waterloo plant had high levels of COVID-19 infection early during the pandemic.

In December 2020, then-CEO Dean Banks terminated some plant managers in the Waterloo facility for wagering on the number of employees who would be sickened by the COVID-19 virus and taking the situation too lightly. Banks in 2020 said Tyson had completed its investigation into that matter, and seven members of plant management were suspended and ultimately fired.

The May 23 high court opinion concluded gross negligence was outlined in the petition, which included many claims showing the executive defendants were aware of a COVID outbreak at the plant and were regularly briefed on positive cases and the number of employees with symptoms.

“The petition describes in multiple places the lethal risks that the virus poses to humans and the high risk of transmission between people working close to one another,” according to the court opinion. “The estates, in our view, have alleged sufficient facts to show that the executive defendants knew the peril.”

Plaintiffs argued that Tyson required sick employees to continue working, ignoring the company’s seasonal flu protocol. As the number of COVID cases escalated in 2020 at the Waterloo plant, which employed 3,000 workers, the number of sickened workers approached 1,000. The documents cited, even after 656 call-ins from sick workers, the company reassured others there was no outbreak.

Local health workers from the Black Hawk County Health Department reported a lack of personal protective equipment and a crowded floor during their visit to the plant in 2020. More than two dozen plant workers were admitted to the emergency room with COVID-19 symptoms. Two of those died from COVID complications.

In its recent ruling, the high court justices wrote that the plaintiffs demonstrated a sufficient argument for alleged gross negligence by Tyson officials. To establish a gross negligence claim, three elements are necessary, according to the court: knowledge of the peril to be apprehended; knowledge that injury is a probable, as opposed to a possible, result of the danger; and a conscious failure to avoid the peril.

Other allegations against Tyson included disregarding contact tracing required by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), keeping sick workers on the line, and lying to plant employees about the risk of COVID-19.

This Iowa Supreme Court decision will affect more than a dozen other cases filed by the families of the dead workers at Tyson Foods and its competitor meatpacker JBS, a Brazilian-owned company.

“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,” said Mel Orchard, attorney for the workers’ families. “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.”

The surviving claims will go back to the district court for further proceedings.

Link here for a PDF of the Iowa Supreme Court ruling.