The Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of the families of four workers at the Tyson meatpacking plant in Waterloo who died of COVID-19 in 2020. The workers’ families are asking the Iowa Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision that dismissed their claims as a workers compensation issue. Attorney G. Bryan Ulmer says Tyson executives and supervisors committed fraud and gross negligence after they lied to employees and told workers with COVID symptoms to keep coming to work.
He says at the same time the supervisors were placing bets on how many positive COVID-19 cases would result from the outbreak. The end result was the largest workplace outbreak of COVID-19 in the entire country. He says that leads to this question.
Attorney David Yoshimura represented some of the Waterloo plant supervisors who were sued and says these claims that belong in the workers comp system, not in the courts.
The Iowa Supreme Court will issue a ruling at a later date on whether the cases can move forward in district court, or if they have to be handled as worker compensation claims.
