Iowa justices hear appeal of Tyson COVID-19 lawsuit

WATERLOO — The Iowa Supreme Court is considering arguments that could put back on track a lawsuit brought by relatives of Waterloo Tyson workers who died of COVID-19 when the plant stayed open during the pandemic.

Last year, a district court judge dismissed the lawsuit brought by the estates of Isidro Fernandez, Sedika Buljic, Reberiano Leno Garcia and Jose Luis Ayala Jr., ruling that under Iowa law, the claims had to be handled administratively through the Workers’ Compensation Act because the company’s actions did not rise to the level of gross negligence amounting to wanton neglect.

Lawyers for the workers appealed the lawsuit’s dismissal, and attorney G. Bryan Ulmer III on Thursday argued the workers’ case before the Iowa Supreme Court.

The issue “is whether or not the Workers’ Compensation Act legislation, which was originally intended to protect workers, now protects employers and coworkers from intentionally tortious conduct,” Ulmer said.

He said the law allows for exceptions where employers commanded or expressly authorized others to commit fraud, and he acknowledged the exception has never been used.

“As far as I can tell, this will be the first case where this court has the opportunity to apply or not, this intentional tort exception to workers comp exclusivity.”

Attorney David Yoshimura, representing some Tyson supervisors, said lawyers for the Tyson workers used “gamesmanship” to keep the case in the court.

“These are straightforward workplace injury claims,” he argued. “They belong before the DWC (Division of Workers’ Compensation), they are in the exclusive province of the division. The Legislature has made the judgment that the courts are divested of jurisdiction of these claims.

“What the district court found was, assuming all of these well-pleaded facts were true, there is no possibility for the court to maintain jurisdiction over these claims,” he said.

The Iowa Supreme Court will rule on the matter at a later date.

The workers’ lawsuit claims Tyson and company supervisors intentionally misled workers about the presence of the coronavirus at the Waterloo plant in 2020, claiming government officials has cleared the facility and also that managers had forbidden interpreters from discussing the danger.

Those actions, the lawsuit claims, resulted in the largest workplace COVID outbreak in the nation’s meatpacking plants.

The district court also dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by the estates of two other Tyson workers, Kabeya “Axel” Mukendi and Felicie Joseph. The dismissal has been appealed.

Tyson temporarily shut down its Waterloo factory in the first weeks of the pandemic in 2020, after 863 employees tested positive for the disease, according to documents the company later submitted to the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Through February 2021, according to the company, 1,174 Waterloo employees tested positive for the virus, and at least seven of those workers died.

The Select Subcommittee reported more than 12,000 Tyson Foods workers contracted COVID-19, with 38 dying from the virus. The world's largest meat-packer, JBS USA, reported 18 COVID-19-related fatalities out of 3,000 positive cases.