Smithfield Foods Inc. urged a Missouri federal court to heed public health and workplace safety regulators, and dismiss a lawsuit brought by employees who say they weren’t adequately protected from Covid-19 exposure at its Missouri pork processing plant.
Virus-related workplace safety and public health concerns are “both outside the conventional experience of judges and squarely within the technical and policy expertise of” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Missouri’s public health department, Smithfield argued in a motion filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
The mandatory injunction sought is “truly unprecedented,” Smithfield said. ...