The family of a 16-year-old Guatemalan immigrant who died at a poultry processing plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, filed a lawsuit Thursday against the plant's owner, Mar-Jac Poultry MS, LLC, attorneys representing him said. to the family.
The document alleges that Duvan Robert Tomás Pérez, 16, died because the company deliberately ignored safety procedures at its Hattiesburg chicken processing plant.
"Mar-Jack and its subsidiaries have a long and sordid history of deliberate disregard for worker safety," a portion of the lawsuit states.
Duvan Robert Tomás Pérez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan, died while cleaning equipment at the Mar-Jac poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.Duvan Pérez via Facebook
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Edilma Pérez Ramírez, Pérez's mother, asks the judge to take the case before a jury to determine the corresponding compensation for the damages caused to the victim's family, including medical, legal and funeral expenses. , the value of the young man's future earnings and the emotional pain they caused, as well as punitive damages.
The plaintiffs claim that Onin Staffing, LLC was negligent in illegally assigning Perez, a minor, to work at the plant and claims that Perez's death is the third at the facility in less than three years.
Perez, who was hired to clean at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, which supplies chicken to companies such as Chick-fil-A, died on July 14, 2023 around 8:00 p.m. (local time).
A few hours after his death, a local media outlet raised doubts about his true age, and
it was soon determined that he was 16 years old
.
It is illegal for minors to work in slaughterhouses, considered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States.
In the text of the lawsuit, it is claimed that Pérez was trapped in the rotating shaft and gear wheels of a machine and was dragged, causing him a gruesome death.
"What makes this case so outrageous is that another worker had died in a very similar manner just two years earlier, and yet Mar-Jac did nothing to improve employee safety.
Mar-Jac's overall safety record Jac is terrible
," said Jim Reeves, one of the family's lawyers, in a press release.
"These working conditions have to change. Chick-fil-A is one of Mar-Jac's largest customers. It and other Mar-Jac customers should insist on better working conditions or stop doing business with them," he said. attorney Seth Hunter said in the statement.
"Pérez was very hard-working and loved his family. One of the things he was most proud of was having paid for his first car himself. It is a tragedy that his young life was taken away from him when his death was easily avoidable," he stressed.
Noticias Telemundo and NBC News have reported extensively on violations of child labor laws at multiple meat processing companies around the United States, and especially the employment of immigrant minors.
Both news organizations spent a year investigating child labor in the United States.
The investigations gave rise to the documentary
Slaughterhouse Children
, based on reporting in two countries and six states, dozens of interviews and the review of thousands of public documents, accident reports, internal data and corporate documents.
During research for the documentary, Mar-Jac confirmed to NBC News that Perez had used the identity of a man in his 30s.
When shown a photograph of the 16-year-old, Larry Stine, Mar-Jac's attorney, stated that Perez did not look like a man of that age.
"He might have looked 18 years old," added Stine, who has represented the Georgia-based company since the 1990s.
Mar-Jac blamed the hiring of the teenager on a third company that supplies workers to the plant.
When asked if the company was surprised to learn that Perez was 16, Stine said, "Yes, they were surprised, I can tell you that.
They were shocked and kind of horrified
."
At least nine times in the past three years, American citizens have complained to the Hattiesburg Police Department — and sometimes to Mar-Jac — that their identities were stolen and used by company workers, according to police reports obtained through public information requests.
On January 16, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicated that the poultry plant was directly to blame for Pérez's death.
OSHA said it had cited Georgia-based Mar-Jac Poultry for 14 serious violations and proposed more than $200,000 in fines.
"Mar-Jac Poultry is aware of how dangerous the machinery it uses can be when safety standards are not in place to prevent serious injury and death.
The company's inaction has directly led to this terrible tragedy
, which has left so many in mourning the preventable death of this minor," said OSHA Regional Administrator Kurth Petermeyer.