The mother of a 16-year-old who was killed at a chicken processing plant has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Gainesville-based company that owns the plant.
Duvan Pérez was killed on July 14, 2023, when he got caught in the rollers of an automated deboning machine at Mar-Jac Poultry in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
WDAM, a Mississippi TV station, reports the lawsuit names Mar-Jac Poultry, LLC, as well as safety supervisor John Daniels and human resources director Letissha Hill as co-defendants, along with Onin Staffing, LLC, the company that hired and assigned Pérez to work at the plant.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (revised 2016) Hazardous Occupations Orders, HO 10, no one under the age of 18 is allowed to work in the meat and poultry processing industry due to high rates of injuries and death.
Mar-Jac officials claims that they did not know Pérez was a teenager and blamed the oversight on the staffing agency.
“Due to an unprecedentedly tight labor market, Mar-Jac MS relies on staffing companies to fill positions at its facility,” a statement by Mar-Jac said. “Mar-Jac MS would never knowingly put any employee, and certainly not a minor, in harm’s way, but it appears, at this point in the investigation, that this individual’s age and identity were misrepresented on the paperwork.”
According to a report, Pérez was hired under the false identity of a 32-year-old man. The same report cited nine police reports from the Hattiesburg Police Department claiming employees at Mar-Jac were using stolen identities.