Opinion
Case No. 21-CV-387-SCD
2022-06-08
Rigoberto RUIZ, et al., Plaintiffs, v. CONAGRA FOODS PACKAGED FOODS LLC, Defendant.
Douglas J. Phebus, Victor M. Arellano, Arellano & Phebus SC, Middleton, WI, for Plaintiffs. Emily L. Stedman, Patrick M. Harvey, Husch Blackwell LLP, Milwaukee, WI, for Defendant.
Douglas J. Phebus, Victor M. Arellano, Arellano & Phebus SC, Middleton, WI, for Plaintiffs.
Emily L. Stedman, Patrick M. Harvey, Husch Blackwell LLP, Milwaukee, WI, for Defendant.
DECISION AND ORDER
STEPHEN C. DRIES, United States Magistrate Judge
Plaintiff Rigoberto Ruiz alleges that he contracted the novel coronavirus due to unsafe working conditions at his employer, ConAgra Foods Packaged Foods, LLC. He then transmitted the virus to his wife, who died from it. On May 3, 2022, I granted, in part, defendant ConAgra's motion to dismiss. However, I withheld ruling on the question of negligence. Specifically, I found that although ConAgra had a duty of care to Mrs. Ruiz, Wisconsin's public policy might nevertheless preclude any recovery to a third party who was not employed at ConAgra. ECF No. 32 at 21–22. This was a possibility due to standard principles of Wisconsin's negligence law, as well as the fact that the state legislature passed, and the governor signed, a shield law barring liability for coronavirus transmissions. Accordingly, I requested that the parties provide additional briefing on the question of public policy, and they have now filed supplemental briefs. For the reasons given below, I conclude that public policy precludes liability in this action.
A public policy analysis is separate and distinct from determining whether a duty exists in a particular case. Smaxwell v. Bayard, 274 Wis.2d 278, 682 N.W.2d 923, 936 (2004). "[W]hen the issues are complex or the factual connections attenuated, it may be desirable for a full trial to precede the court's determination." Bowen v. Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co., 183 Wis.2d 627, 517 N.W.2d 432 (1994). However, "[w]hen the pleadings present a question of public policy, the court may make its determination on public policy grounds before trial." Id. Here, the amended complaint sets forth a series of allegations that may be taken as true for present purposes without further factual development. Moreover, the parties have now had a chance to squarely address the public policy question. Therefore, "this court is determining public policy considerations before trial because the facts presented are simple, and because the question of public policy is fully presented by the complaint and the motion to dismiss." Id. ; see also Alvarado v. Sersch , 262 Wis.2d 74, 662 N.W.2d 350, 359 (2003) (Sykes, J., dissenting) ("Some cases are factually uncomplicated and fully conducive to a pre-trial legal determination on the applicability of public policy limitations on liability. This is such a case.")
The public policy considerations that may preclude liability are:
(1) the injury is too remote from the negligence; (2) the injury is too wholly
out of proportion to the tortfeasor's culpability; (3) in retrospect it appears too highly extraordinary that the negligence should have resulted in the harm; (4) allowing recovery would place too unreasonable a burden on the tortfeasor; (5) allowing recovery would be too likely to open the way for fraudulent claims; [or] (6) allowing recovery would enter a field that has no sensible or just stopping point.
Alvarado, 662 N.W.2d at 354. Here, I conclude that although several of these factors may be implicated, the fourth and sixth factors are controlling. In short, allowing recovery under these circumstances would create too unreasonable a burden on the defendant, and it would enter a field that has no sensible stopping point. Id.
I. Wisconsin Cases Addressing Liability to Third Parties
The transmission of the novel coronavirus from an employee to a non-employee is a matter of first impression in Wisconsin's courts. However, it's possible to draw inferences from how Wisconsin's courts have handled other claims alleging injury to third parties. Two cases stand out. First, in Stephenson v. Universal Metrics, Inc. , 2002 WI 30, ¶¶ 4–9, 251 Wis.2d 171, 641 N.W.2d 158, 160–62, a man named Kreuser promised to drive an intoxicated coworker, Devine, home from a work party. Based on that assurance, the bartender continued to serve Devine drinks. Later, however, Kreuser failed to drive Devine home. When Devine tried to drive himself home, he crossed the centerline and caused a collision that killed a woman named Kathy Stephenson.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court found that although all the elements of negligence had been met against Kreuser, the man who'd promised to drive Devine home, public policy considerations barred liability against him. Id. at 168–70. The court's decision recognized that the injury to Stephenson was not caused by a singular unbroken chain of events but instead was the product of multiple elements, many of which were outside Kreuser's control. Although Kreuser had promised to drive Devine home, he was not "in charge" of Devine—"Devine still maintained control over his own actions at the party that night." Id. at 169. "Once Kreuser agreed to drive Devine home, Kreuser would have had either to follow Devine around all night, or perhaps have kept Devine confined or tied up somewhere in order to prevent Devine from wandering off without Kreuser's knowledge." Id. The court found that imposing liability would place an unreasonable burden on Kreuser.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court echoed a similar theme in Nichols v. Progressive Northern Insurance Co., 2008 WI 20, 308 Wis.2d 17, 746 N.W.2d 220, where the court addressed another drunk-driving scenario, this time arising out of an underage party. The Niesens were social hosts who allegedly were aware that teenagers on their property were consuming alcoholic beverages. Id. at 223. One of the minors caused an injury while driving home in an intoxicated state. The court found that public policy barred claims against social hosts who merely knew about, but did not provide, alcoholic beverages to minors. Id. at 227–31. As in Stephenson , the court found that imposing liability under those circumstances would place too unreasonable a burden on the host.
Liability for a social host who did not specifically know of the particular person drinking and who did not provide the alcohol places too unreasonable of a burden on that social host. Furthermore, such a requirement would force social hosts to do such things as check identification cards, screen all guests for alcohol consumption, and figure out who is driving and then whether or not those
drivers are fit to drive. As here, social hosts cannot be expected to control the consumption of alcohol before or after people are on the property that they control.
Nichols , 746 N.W.2d at 228–29, The court also found that "allowing recovery would have no sensible or just stopping point." Id. at 229 (quoting Stephenson , 641 N.W.2d at 168 ). "If the Nichols’ claim were allowed to proceed, the expansion of liability might also include liability for parents who allegedly should have known that drinking would occur on their property while they were absent, based on the proclivities of teenagers in a given area to consume alcohol." Nichols , 746 N.W.2d at 230.
The Nichols court found several factors to be salient. First, the homeowner did not provide the alcohol to the teenagers but merely "knew about underage drinking at some point during the evening." Id. at 228. "Liability for a social host who did not specifically know of the particular person drinking and who did not provide the alcohol places too unreasonable of a burden on that social host." That echoes the allegations here. ConAgra, obviously, did not create the virus or infect anyone; it simply knew (as everyone else did) that it was circulating. The virus came from somewhere else, and there's no allegation that ConAgra somehow knew that a specific employee was contagious. The point implicit in Nichols is that while it might be reasonable to impose liability when the host itself creates the very danger in question, it's less reasonable to do so when the host is merely aware of the dangerous situation. For example, if ConAgra had been a biochemical manufacturer who created a toxic product that caused injury to a third-party non-employee, this might be a different story. But merely being aware of a danger that is imported from outside the plant, and wholly unrelated to its business, creates a less tenable case for liability to the non-employee third party who suffers injury.
Second, the Nichols court appreciated, as did the Stephenson court, that the host's power to control its premises was of diminished relevance given the number of other links necessary in the chain of causation, most of which were outside its control. The alcohol in Nichols came from outside the Niesens’ home, and then the driver left the property and caused injury outside its premises—both areas wholly outside of the hosts’ control. Moreover, consumption of alcohol does not automatically result in a car accident, much less death. Even assuming the driver is impaired, countless other factors must conspire—outside of the hosts’ premises—to produce the tragedy. The same holds true here: the virus came from outside the ConAgra plant and was transmitted to Mrs. Ruiz outside of the plant, both areas in which ConAgra had zero ability to control. Assuming Mr. Ruiz caught the virus at work, that was no guarantee he would pass it on, and it was even less likely that it would cause a death. In effect, ConAgra was a "host" that allegedly did not police its employees sufficiently enough to ensure that the virus could not spread between them (and then infect someone outside the plant). The Wisconsin Supreme Court suggests that's not enough.
It's worth pausing here to acknowledge that the analogy between a viral exposure in the workplace and the drinking party cases cited above is far from perfect. Here, for example, the amended complaint alleges not only that ConAgra merely knew that the virus was circulating, but that it encouraged employees who were symptomatic to keep working. Even if the virus originated outside its plant, it can't be said that ConAgra was exactly akin to the passive social hosts in Nichols who merely were aware of underage drinking. Even so, Nichols suggests that hosts need not be in the business of "check[ing] identification cards, screen[ing] all guests," and otherwise policing their premises. 746 N.W.2d at 228–29. (And recall that Nichols involved underage drinkers, not adult employees.) This echoed the court's concern in Stephenson , where it noted that Kreuser lacked the ability to control what Devine did the entire night. 641 N.W.2d at 169. In each case the defendant—the man who promised to drive home, and the host who provided a place where teenagers could drink—was likely a but-for cause of the injury. However, in neither case did the defendant exercise the level of control necessary to prevent the injury because events outside of their control were also crucial. Ultimately, these two cases suggest that Wisconsin courts would not impose liability for viral transmissions to third parties when so much of a chain of causation occurred outside the employer's sphere of control. And that might be particularly true in a pandemic. By definition, when a pandemic occurs it means a disease is spreading throughout the world at large—not just in the ConAgra plant. Pan means everywhere.
II. Out-of-State Asbestos Cases Brought by Employees’ Family Members
Neither party has cited a case involving the transmission of a disease from an employee to a third-party non-employee. Even so, there is a wide body of "take home" asbestos cases from other states that may provide a meaningful analog. In these cases, an employee typically works with asbestos for decades. The asbestos clings to his work clothes, which he wears home every day. A family member then becomes exposed to the asbestos repeatedly at home. "Oftentimes, the plaintiffs in these cases are spouses who had laundered their husbands’ asbestos-covered work clothes after he returned from his employer's facility each day." Meghan E. Flinn, Note, A Continuing War with Asbestos: The Stalemate Among State Courts on Liability for Take-Home Asbestos Exposure , 71 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 707, 710 (2014).
Many of the courts addressing liability to non-employee family members relied on public policy. For example, although it couched its analysis in the familiar negligence lexicon of "duty," the Michigan Supreme Court recognized that the analysis was driven by public policy:
[T]he ultimate inquiry in determining whether a legal duty should be imposed is whether the social benefits of imposing a duty outweigh the social costs of imposing a duty. The inquiry involves considering ...: "the relationship of the parties, the foreseeability of the harm, the burden on the defendant, and the nature of the risk presented."
Miller v. Ford Motor Co. , 479 Mich. 498, 740 N.W.2d 206, 216 (2007) ( In re Certified Question from Fourteenth Dist. Ct. App. Tex. ) (quoting Dyer v. Trachtman , 470 Mich. 45, 679 N.W.2d 311, 314 (2004) ). "[I]n fixing the bounds of duty, not only logic and science, but policy play an important role." Miller , 740 N.W.2d at 218 (quoting CSX Transp., Inc. v. Williams , 278 Ga. 888, 608 S.E.2d 208, 211 (2005) ). That court concluded that
Ford, as the owner of the property on which asbestos-containing products were located, did not owe to Carolyn Miller, who was never on or near that property, a legal duty to protect her from exposure to any asbestos fibers carried home on the clothing of a member of her household who was working on that property as the employee of independent contractors, where there was no further relationship between defendant and Miller.
Miller , 740 N.W.2d at 209–10.
In reaching its decision, the Michigan Supreme Court surveyed several other state court decisions. In CSX Transportation , the Georgia Supreme Court had also denied liability, finding that "[t]he recognition of a common-law cause of action under the circumstances of this case would, in our opinion, expand traditional tort concepts beyond manageable bounds and create an almost infinite universe of potential plaintiffs." 608 S.E.2d at 209 (quoting Widera v. Ettco Wire & Cable Corp, 204 A.D.2d 306, 611 N.Y.S.2d 569, 571 (1994) ). The Michigan court also cited a case from the New York Court of Appeals, which had feared that if an employee's spouse may bring a claim, a claim could potentially be brought by the employee's babysitter or even someone who worked at a laundromat. Miller , 740 N.W.2d at 214 (citing Holdampf v. A.C. & S., Inc. , 5 N.Y.3d 486, 806 N.Y.S.2d 146, 840 N.E.2d 115, 122 (2005) ( In re N.Y.C. Asbestos Litigation )). The New York court observed:
[W]e must consider the likely consequences of adopting the expanded duty urged by plaintiffs. While logic might suggest (and plaintiffs maintain) that the incidence of asbestos-related disease allegedly caused by the kind of secondhand exposure at issue in this case is rather low, experience counsels that the number of new plaintiffs’ claims would not necessarily reflect that reality.
Holdampf , 806 N.Y.S.2d 146, 840 N.E.2d at 122. The Michigan court also cited a case from Maryland that echoed these concerns in finding that
[i]f liability for exposure to asbestos could be premised on Mary Wild's handling of her husband's clothing, presumably Bethlehem would owe a duty to others who came in close contact with Edwin Wild, including other family members, automobile passengers, and co-workers. Bethlehem owed no duty to strangers based upon providing a safe workplace for employees.
Miller , 740 N.W.2d at 214 (quoting Adams v. Owens–Illinois, Inc., 119 Md.App. 395, 705 A.2d 58, 66 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1998).
The Michigan Supreme Court did recognize that courts in Louisiana and New Jersey had not precluded liability under similar circumstances. The New Jersey court, for example, found that the employer owed a duty to the employee's wife because it would have been foreseeable that she would have come into contact with his asbestos-laden clothing. Olivo v. Owens-Illinois, Inc., 186 N.J. 394, 895 A.2d 1143, 1149–50 (2006). That court also minimized any concern that liability would be far-flung or unlimited: "[t]he duty we recognize in these circumstances is focused on the particularized foreseeability of harm to plaintiff's wife, who ordinarily would perform typical household chores that would include laundering the work clothes worn by her husband." Id. at 1150.
Other courts addressing this question have focused on whether the dangers of asbestos would have been foreseeable at the time of the exposure in question. See, e.g. , ALCOA, Inc. v. Behringer , 235 S.W.3d 456, 460 (Tex. App. 2007).
More recently, the Tennessee Supreme Court echoed Olivo ’s analysis in Satterfield v. Breeding Insulation Co., 266 S.W.3d 347, 374 (Tenn. 2008), where it concluded that "the duty we recognize today extends to those who regularly and repeatedly come into close contact with an employee's contaminated work clothes over an extended period of time."
The Tennessee Supreme Court declared that there existed a "pronounced split of authority" on the question of take-home liability, id. at 372, and that seems a fair conclusion. Perhaps it would be a coin toss as to how Wisconsin's Supreme Court would rule in a take-home asbestos case. However, there are at least three important distinctions between asbestos and viral transmissions that tip the scales against finding liability in a case like this. First, in asbestos cases employers are deliberately exposing employees to products that contain asbestos, which is presumably a profitable component of the employer's business. The employer has, in effect, created the danger. In the Tennessee case, for example, the court noted that Alcoa used asbestos-containing materials in its operations for decades and had been aware of its dangers since the 1930s. Id. at 352. Here, by contrast, the plaintiffs do not allege that ConAgra created the virus or profited from it in any fashion. In the asbestos cases, the employer's use of asbestos was the sole cause of the disease—asbestos is not circulating in the air but for the fact that it is used in the employer's manufacturing operations. And unlike COVID-19, mesothelioma is a rare disease, with just 3,000 cases diagnosed each year. By stark contrast, the virus is in circulation everywhere, not just at ConAgra's plant. Needless to say, nearly all the almost 1.7 million Wisconsinites to have contracted the coronavirus have contracted the virus somewhere else. As in Nichols , where the hosts did not supply the alcohol, ConAgra did not supply the dangerous virus; it is alleged merely to have fostered an environment in which the virus transmitted or thrived. Wisconsin's courts have indicated that is a factor counseling against the expansion of liability.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer /malignant-mesothelioma/about/key-statistics.html, last visited June 7, 2022.
https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/cases.htm, last visited June 7, 2022.
A second distinction is the timing. In Satterfield , for example, Alcoa had been aware of the dangers of asbestos as far back as the 1930s. OSHA had imposed regulations regarding the washing of employees’ clothes as early as 1972. Despite that knowledge and the regulations, employees "left the plant each day unaware of the dangers posed by the asbestos fibers on their contaminated work clothes and without Alcoa making an effort to prevent others from being exposed to the asbestos fibers on its employees’ clothes." Id. at 353. The plaintiff—the young daughter of an Alcoa employee—contracted mesothelioma around 2003, some thirty years after OSHA imposed the regulations. Alcoa and employers like it had years, and usually decades, to adjust their practices to protect employees and third parties like family members. Here, by contrast, the allegations arise out of April 2020, the very first full month that the pandemic hit Wisconsin. As such, ConAgra found itself in a completely different position than companies that used asbestos. Ultimately, the novelty of the risk as it stood in April 2020 weakens the analogy to those cases that find liability in the take-home asbestos context.
A final distinction involves transmissibility. Whereas a person can contract the coronavirus during a fleeting encounter—a short cab ride, an elevator, etc.—mesothelioma typically requires "high levels of asbestos exposure, usually in the workplace." Thus, the dangers inherent in asbestos exposure are naturally limited to employees and a narrow class of people who are in frequent contact with those employees and their clothing, such as family members who do laundry, or the employees’ children. Olivo , 895 A.2d at 1150 (noting "the particularized foreseeability of harm to plaintiff's wife."). Ultimately, the limited transmissibility of asbestos provides a natural curb on the pool of potential plaintiffs. With COVID-19, by contrast, the pool of potential plaintiffs isn't a pool at all—it's an ocean. If the apprehensions of the courts in Michigan, New York, Maryland, and Georgia have some validity in asbestos cases, those concerns are multiplied exponentially in a case like this, where an employee could single-handedly cause dozens or hundreds of other infections through relatively minimal contact. That, indeed, could "create an almost infinite universe of potential plaintiffs." CSX Transp. , 608 S.E.2d at 209 (citation omitted).
(https://www.cancer.org/cancer /malignant-mesothelioma/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html, last visited June 6, 2022.) The same is true for asbestosis, which is "caused by prolonged exposure to high concentrations of asbestos fibers in the air." (https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/asbestosis, last visited June 6, 2022).
III. Maryland Federal Court Case
The only case I found to have grappled with this exact question determined that public policy barred liability as to a third-party who contracted the virus from an employee. In Estate of Madden v. Southwest Airlines, Co. , No. 1:21-CV-00672-SAG, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 117266, 2021 WL 2580119, at *1 (D. Md. June 23, 2021), a flight attendant sued Southwest Airlines alleging that she contracted the coronavirus at a training event due to the airlines’ unsafe working conditions and that she passed the virus to her husband, who died. The plaintiff alleged that Southwest failed to screen participants and instructors, failed to exclude those who had been exposed to the virus, failed to enforce mask policies, failed to implement safe-distancing requirements, failed to sanitize equipment, and failed to employ contract tracing.
Applying Maryland negligence law, the court found that public policy factors (which in Maryland are tied to the analysis of duty) precluded liability. Id. at *4–8. First, the court found that it would be hard to justify a duty to third parties arising out of workplace safety measures for employees because that would open the proverbial floodgates of litigation. Id. at *6. The plaintiff protested that her own chain of causation would be easy to prove because she lived alone with her husband, followed CDC guidelines, and clearly contracted the virus at work and then spread it to him. As such, she argued, allowing liability under those tightly controlled circumstances would not open the floodgates of litigation. The court disagreed:
COVID-19 is "ubiquitous," ... and as previously noted, an individual's exact point of exposure is therefore often exceedingly difficult to trace, even in circumstances where precautions are taken or where one point of exposure is known. Thus, despite Plaintiffs’ contentions, there are no special causation-based limitations that would allow successful litigation here but foreclose it elsewhere—instead, finding a duty here would leave employers litigating countless COVID-19 third-party exposures simply by virtue of contact with their employees during the pandemic.
Id.
Similarly, the court also found that there were "few clear limiting principles" to potential third-party plaintiffs. Id. at 7.
[T]he range of people one might come in close contact with "at home" can vary significantly, despite how facially narrow the notion of "home" appears. It is not always as simple as Ms. Madden coming home to her husband alone. Take, for example, an apartment building—it may be necessary for a resident to walk through a common lobby, share an elevator, and pass other residents in narrow hallways. What distinguishes those encounters, unavoidable despite compliance with CDC guidelines, from Mr. Madden? Would Southwest be liable to everyone in Ms. Madden's hypothetical apartment building? What about essential outings like trips to the grocery store or, similarly, a bathroom break
during Mr. and Ms. Madden's drive from BWI to Pennsylvania following the training? ... The "floodgates" consequence of imposing a duty here therefore weighs against such an imposition.
Id.
Identical considerations are at play here. The plaintiffs have not proposed any principled way to limit liability to a narrow subset of potential third parties without opening the door to potentially unlimited liability. Although Mrs. Ruiz was the spouse of the employee, she could also have been a neighbor, a houseguest, or someone Mr. Ruiz drove with in a vehicle. She could be someone who caught the virus from someone who caught it from Mr. Ruiz. It might be argued that those more attenuated interactions would have difficulty demonstrating causation (given that the virus is ubiquitous), and that the inherent difficulty in showing causation could serve as a natural dam to the proverbial floodgates of litigation. The Maryland court persuasively rejected that argument, however. And, as the New York Court of Appeals concluded, "experience counsels that the number of new plaintiffs’ claims would not necessarily reflect that reality." Holdampf , 806 N.Y.S.2d 146, 840 N.E.2d at 123. Moreover, any practical difficulty in demonstrating causation would not answer the more theoretical question of whether there is any principled stopping point for determining whether an employer would be liable to A, B, and C, but not D and E. The fact is, under the plaintiff's theory, anyone exposed to someone who was exposed at the ConAgra plant would have a viable negligence claim.
IV. Wisconsin's COVID Liability Shield Law
Finally, the fact that the political branches of the State of Wisconsin have enacted a liability shield for exactly these kinds of claims cannot go unremarked. In Stephenson , the court noted that although the public policy analysis was typically a judicial undertaking, it may also be appropriate to view those policy factors "in light of relevant legislative enactments." 641 N.W.2d at 168–69. Here, the legislature enacted, and the governor signed, a law providing that businesses are immune from civil liability resulting from the novel coronavirus unless the act or omission involves reckless or intentional misconduct, which isn't really alleged here. Wis. Stat. § 895.476(2). Although the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit one day prior to the February 27, 2021, effective date of the statute, the statute would otherwise grant immunity dating back to March 1, 2020, which predates the infection at issue here. Thus, although the immunity statute does not strictly apply to this case, a court considering public policy must nevertheless take heed of the fact that Wisconsin's political branches have expressly stated that public policy does not favor lawsuits arising out of workplace exposure to the coronavirus.
V. Conclusion
In a world where every wrong must have a remedy, the law might provide recompense to a plaintiff against the company whose acts or omissions led to the infection of an employee who ultimately infected the plaintiff. However, as Judge Andrews recognized in his Palsgraf dissent nearly one hundred years ago, "because of convenience, of public policy, of a rough sense of justice, the law arbitrarily declines to trace a series of events beyond a certain point. This is not logic. It is practical politics." Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co. , 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99, 103 (1928) (Andrews, J., dissenting). In a pandemic that has resulted in some sixty percent of the United States population contracting the virus, it becomes increasingly impractical to focus on a single outbreak. For the reasons given above, I conclude that imposing liability under these circumstances would impose too great a burden on the defendant and would enter a field with no reasonable or principled stopping point. Wisconsin's public policy would therefore bar recovery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/04/26/majority-americans-coronavirus-infections/ (citing https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7117e3.htm?s_cid=mm7117e3_e&ACSTrackingID[% E2% 80% A6].% 2071% 2C% 20April% 2026% 2C% 202022&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM80513 )
Accordingly, the court GRANTS the defendant's motion to dismiss, ECF No. 27. The clerk of court shall enter judgment that this action is dismissed and that the plaintiffs shall take nothing from the defendant by their complaint.
SO ORDERED this 8th of June, 2022.