Families of deceased Tyson Foods Inc. workers in Iowa may resume their lawsuits against current and former Tyson officials, according to a recent Iowa Supreme Court opinion.

The decision stems from four estates filing lawsuits against Tyson, company executives, and plant supervisors. The lawsuits alleged gross negligence and fraud related to four Tyson workers at a Waterloo, Iowa, pork processing facility who died after contracting covid-19.

The opinion of the court did affirm the dismissal of the case against the Tyson company as a whole and two other named defendants in the case.

Tyson did not respond to an immediate request for comment on the court opinion.

The lawsuits were initially dismissed by an Iowa District Court, which stated Iowa's Workers' Compensation Act provided the exclusive remedy for the estates' claims.

The district court claimed the act provided the exclusive means of recovery for the workers' deaths and the initial petition failed to establish a right to pursue claims under the statute's carve out for gross negligence claims.

It also concluded the petition had improperly lumped the defendants together, referring to them as categories without specifying the duty or claim to each defendant.

However, the Iowa Supreme Court disagreed with the reasoning, stating the groupings provided each defendant with fair notice of the claims against them.

"Plaintiffs are not forbidden from defining and referring to a group of defendants collectively under a particular moniker for ease of reference in a petition," stated the opinion. "Indeed, we note that even the defendants referred to themselves as 'supervisory defendants' and 'executive defendants' at the motion to dismiss hearing."

For gross negligence, the higher court's opinion stated that the petition includes many allegations showing the executive defendants were aware of a covid-19 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 in close proximity to one another," according to the court opinion. "The estates, in our view, have alleged sufficient facts to show that the executive defendants had knowledge of the peril."

The executive defendants listed include John Tyson, company chairman; Noel White, former chief executive officer; Dean Banks, former company president; Stephen Stouffer, former president of Tyson Fresh Meats; Tom Brower, former senior vice president of health and safety; and Doug White, former corporate safety manager of Tyson Fresh Meats.

During the pandemic, Tyson would require the workers at the Waterloo pork processing facility to continue working, even if they were symptomatic, until they had a positive virus test result.

Court documents state this decision went against the company's seasonal flu policy requiring symptomatic workers to go home.

Supervisors allegedly referred to the virus as the "glorified flu," and there was a case of a worker throwing up on the production line who was allowed to continue to work.

As cases and symptoms of the virus rose in April 2020, the Waterloo facility saw an increased number of workers calling in sick, with the company then reassuring the workers there wasn't an outbreak.

The Waterloo facility, which employed nearly 3,000 workers, saw a high of 656 calls from employees describing covid-19 symptoms.

According to the court opinion, the Black Hawk County Health Department attempted to work with the plant, but the company refused to cooperate. When the county was finally permitted to enter the facility they were "shocked" at the lack of personal protective equipment and the crowded floor.

After the visit, almost two dozen plant workers were admitted to the emergency room with covid-19 symptoms, with two of the employees later dying from pandemic-related complications.

Tyson shut down the plant temporarily after an intervention from Iowa government officials, and a reduction in its healthy labor force.

The Waterloo plant was the largest workplace outbreak of the virus in the United States, according to the opinion. The local county health department attributed 90% of the county's total covid-19 cases to the facility.