A federal appeals court recently dismissed a lawsuit alleging that Tyson Foods was responsible for seven workers contracting COVID-19 at an Amarillo, Texas, meat-processing plant.

The workers claimed the company required them to continue in-person work during a local stay-at-home order, required people infected with COVID-19 to continue working, and failed to provide personal protective equipment or implement social distancing.

The plaintiffs' allegations failed to satisfy the requirements for them to prevail on their negligence claims despite the Texas Pandemic Liability Protection Act (PLPA), the court stated. The PLPA shields corporations from liability for exposing an individual to a pandemic disease during a pandemic emergency unless claimants satisfy two requirements, which the plaintiffs failed to do in this case. First, they failed to show the employer knowingly did not: 1) warn of or remediate a condition that it knew was likely to result in exposure to the disease, or 2) comply with government-issued standards, guidance or protocols intended to lower the likelihood of exposure. Second, the plaintiffs didn't establish reliable scientific evidence to show the company caused the individuals to contract the disease.

The "plaintiffs have provided no facts to plausibly suggest that of the myriad places and ways in which they could have been exposed to COVID-19, they contracted the virus at the Tyson plant as a result of Tyson's negligence," the court stated.

Tyson did...

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