JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The mother of a pregnant MoDOT worker who was killed in a work zone has gained bipartisan support that would settle a dispute over the unborn fetus.
Pregnant Kaitlyn Anderson died in November 2021 in an incident that remains in litigation. Families of Anderson and James Brooks, another MoDOT worker who was killed, are suing MoDOT over the failure to protect the work zone with a buffer truck.
Attorney Andrew Mundwiller has talked about the difficulty of suing the government, but even he didn’t see it coming when MoDOT claimed Anderson’s unborn baby Jaxx was their employee.
“What they’re hoping is they don’t pay anything,” Mundwiller said in April 2023.
If the courts view the unborn baby Jaxx as an employee, then the lawsuit is dismissed, and it becomes a worker’s compensation claim, according to Mundwiller. From there, the compensation claim would be dismissed, as it was for Anderson.
Anderson’s mom, Tonya Musskopf, has not taken this quietly.
“I think the State of Missouri, the citizens and the legislators need to know the disgusting tactics that MoDOT is using,” she said.
Musskopf always had the support of Democratic Representative Michael Burton. Now, Republican Representatives Dean Van Schoiack and Cyndi Buccheit-Courtway have filed “Jaxx’s Law.”
In a bill that’s a paragraph long, it states, “An unborn child shall not be considered an employee of a business.”
Representative Burton said that the bill is intended to bring justice to families.
“If your family member is killed at the hands of their employer, they should face justice like in a criminal act,” Musskopf added.
Meanwhile, MoDOT has taken the fight over claiming Jaxx as an employee to the Missouri Supreme Court. A decision is expected at any moment.
“I hope the judges on that bench listen to the reps and listen to myself and know that what I lost that day never can be replaced, but we can hold MoDOT accountable and make them protect their employees going forward,” Musskopf said.
MoDOT has told FOX 2 that they cannot discuss active litigation.