Civil Action Related to COVID-19 Death of Texas Employee Barred by Exclusivity

A federal district court, sitting in Texas and construing Texas law, granted a defendant-employer’s motion for summary judgment in a civil action filed against it by the family of a worker who died as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak [Sil v. Larsen Farms, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27705 (N.D. Tex. Feb. 15, 2022)]. The federal trial court acknowledged the plaintiffs’ allegations—inter alia, that the defendant had improperly housed dozens of sick employees in inadequate “quarantine housing,” that it had not provided quarantined employees with adequate food, supplies, and/or medical care, and that the employer was liable for negligence, negligent entrustment, gross negligence, loss of consortium, and breach of contract. The court held, however, that the entire civil action was barred by the exclusive remedy provisions of the Texas Workers’ Compensation Act.

State Court Action Removed

The plaintiffs sued the defendant-employer in state court and the defendant removed the case to federal court on diversity grounds. The federal court stressed that recovery of workers’ compensation benefits was the exclusive remedy of an employee for the death of or work-related injury sustained by an employee. Since there was no dispute as to the fact that the deceased worker was defendant’s employee, the court turned to the issue of whether the worker’s death was work-related. The court noted that in the initial pleadings, plaintiffs had alleged that the deceased died “while working for Defendant.” Moreover, in the plaintiffs’ motion to remand, they had alleged that the worker died “from a workplace incident.” The court that the plaintiffs had judicially admitted their claims were based on a workplace incident and thus no genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the worker’s death was work related.

Texas Act Clearly Prohibits Negligence-Based Tort Claims

The court went on to note that the Texas Act clearly prohibited civil actions against the employer for negligence-based torts. The court said COVID-19 proximately caused the worker’s death. There was no evidence that additional medical care would have allowed the deceased to survive COVID-19.

Breach of Contract Was Also Barred

Also barred, held the court, was the breach of contract claim filed against the employer. Analyzing a line of Texas decisions, the court stressed that because the breach of contract claim also was rooted in “injury or death caused by exposing an individual to a pandemic disease during a pandemic emergency,” the claim was barred [see Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 148.003(a). All the other claims were derivative of the original death claim and were barred as well.