An ‘epidemic of lawsuits’ due to COVID? Businesses want protections, setting up 2021 battle
Manuel Cosme has been providing help to small businesses for 35 years. He’s never seen such worry and confusion as he has in the past few months.
“I have a box of tissues in my office. We’ve had clients who cry in our office not knowing what to do,” said Cosme, senior consultant at Vacaville’s Professional Small Business Services.
People are frightened not only about the future of their small business as the COVID pandemic rages on, but about whether employees will take them to court, saying they contracted the virus at work or were exposed to dangerous conditions.
Employee advocates counter that businesses should be liable if they were in any way negligent about preventive conditions. Business interests insist that while they sympathize and want protection for employees, they also want help with what they see as frivolous lawsuits.
This is a dispute that’s going to linger into 2021, as the new Congress convenes, President-elect Joe Biden takes office and Washington tries to craft a new COVID relief package.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear last month, just before Congress passed a $900 billion relief plan last month without liability protection, that “Liability relief is really important; it’s not just for small businesses..
“It’s universities, it’s nonprofits, it’s hospitals, doctors, nurses,” he told Fox News’ “The Daily Briefing.”
The Kentucky Republican insisted an “epidemic of lawsuits is already developing. These people need to be protected because they were doing the best they can with an unknown disease, and if there is another coronavirus relief bill after the first of the year, I’m going to insist that liability protection for these universities and health care providers is a part of it.”
Lawmakers have been stuck for months on the liability issue. Most Republicans eagerly support liability protection for business. Democrats say that the GOP effort goes too far and would strip workers of important rights.
Small businesses insist protection is crucial to their economic survival, while workers’ rights advocates see a growing need to make sure employees aren’t subjected to dangerous conditions at work..
“It is outrageous and immoral but sadly not surprising that Republicans in Congress led by Mitch McConnell are further rigging the rules for corporations at the expense of the lives of essential workers,” said Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union.
Few COVID-19 lawsuits, so far
Worker rights groups point out that there have been relatively few lawsuits filed against employers in the nine months since the pandemic ravaged the nation’s economy.
From March 12 to December 17, the Littler Mendelson law firm, which specializes in labor law, found 1,435 COVID-related lawsuits had been filed, including 323 in California. The state cases involved a wide variety of industries and businesses, led by complaints against health care providers and retailers.
Employer advocates said more lawsuits are coming.
The number of complaints has risen monthly, from nine in March and 54 in April to 213 in September, 236 in October, 244 in November and 124 in the first 17 days of December.
“Give the law and scheming attorneys time to manipulate this. We fear they most certainly will,” said John Kabateck, California director for the National Federation of Independent Business California.
The plan pushed by Republican senators since this summer would put limits on liability for personal injuries as a result of COVID exposure at schools, colleges, churches, nonprofit organizations or businesses.
They would have to show they have made “reasonable efforts” to comply with public health guidelines, and not engage in “grossly negligent behavior.”
In addition, health care providers would be shielded from liability claims “arising out of the provision of care for coronavirus or services provided as a result of coronavirus.”
Workers already have protection, business interests argue. “The workers’ comp system is the best way to determine whether someone contracted the coronavirus at work and should be compensated,” said Tom Underwood, the National Federation of Independent Business’ Kentucky director.
‘He was ready to sue his cousin’
The outcome of this debate matters a lot to business people such as Cosme, whose firm has five employees and provides bookkeeping, payroll and income tax services to small businesses.
He hears from clients that they expect the number of lawsuits to increase.
He tells the story about a client where an employee contracted the virus and said he got it at work, where he is employed by his cousin.
“He was ready to sue his cousin,” Cosme said. “Turned out he was at a party and so he could have caught it there.”
“How do you prove where you got it?” Cosme asked. “ We need to somehow provide some protection to perhaps the most vulnerable group, the small and medium sized business owners.”
Worker advocates, though, see the liability push as a not-so-subtle way of stripping workers of protections that are more important than ever as the pandemic continues.
“It’s extreme and unconscionable to stick business immunity into a COVID relief package,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, senior counsel at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Under the Republican plan, “an employer could get away with thumbing its nose at federal or state workplace safety requirements by simply claiming that it explored options to comply with those requirements but decided not to act on them,” said William Samuel, AFL-CIO government affairs director.
Cosme heads into the new year with the same questions that have vexed him for months. The $900 billion economic relief plan Congress passed this month is supposed to give small businesses some help, but he’s heard nothing yet.
“Nothing has changed with many of our clients,” he said.
This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "An ‘epidemic of lawsuits’ due to COVID? Businesses want protections, setting up 2021 battle."
.jpg)