In a legislative flurry, 30 states instituted liability protections in late 2020 and early 2021 designed to protect businesses from COVID-19 lawsuits, out of fear that companies would be sued for exposing workers, clients or vendors to the swiftly spreading, deadly disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those lawsuits haven\u2019t materialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proponents of the new laws say that\u2019s because the statutes have scared off potential litigation. But critics say the actions have created a solution in search of a problem, because most employees who sue do so under existing workplace safety regulations, such as those enforced by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or under union rules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And because of the nature of COVID-19, including how fast and easily it spreads, pinpointing and proving the exact location where someone got the virus is difficult. Neither OSHA nor most states issued<\/a> COVID-19 rules for workplaces in the past year, though a few liberal-leaning states did<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dearth of litigation could stem from all those things. His firm mostly represents businesses that have been sued, but it has sometimes represented plaintiffs as well, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn cases where you have employees who got sick on the job, their recourse is really through workers\u2019 comp claims,\u201d he added. \u201cI think that may be another reason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hunton Andrews Kurth\u2019s COVID-19 \u201ccomplaint tracker<\/a>\u201d shows about 200 civil suits have been filed nationwide by workers in 2021 and just 52 have been filed by nonemployees who allege they got COVID-19 in a place of business. The tracker showed 1,700 coronavirus-related civil rights cases and 771 COVID-19 consumer cases over the same time period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kracht said isolating where someone contracted COVID-19 is easy only if those people were in a controlled environment such as a cruise ship at sea for more than 14 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut if I\u2019m a person out in the world\u2014shopping, eating, etc.\u2014it\u2019s pretty hard to prove where I got it.\u201d Many of the state laws were based on model legislation distributed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group known as ALEC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ALEC model bill\u2014titled the \u201cLiability Protection for Employers in a Declared Disaster or Public Emergency Act<\/a>\u201d\u2014would allow proprietors or businesses to operate during a declared disaster or public emergency without the threat of civil litigation if they complied with or made a \u201cgood faith effort\u201d to comply with applicable federal, state or local regulations, orders or laws, said ALEC spokesperson Alexis Jarrett, in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jarrett said suits for coronavirus-related issues are likely to crop up in the coming months and years, which is why the state legislation, and the ALEC model most of them are based on, are necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The new liability protection laws vary, but most of them seek to protect all or specific kinds of businesses from lawsuits that attempt to establish culpability. Exceptions are usually made for negligence, willful misconduct or a provable failure to follow public health orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many governors, especially Republicans in the 23 states where the GOP holds both houses of the legislature and the governorship, championed the liability limitations laws. An example was Gov. Mike Parson of Missouri, who used the Smokin\u2019 Guns BBQ restaurant in north Kansas City as a backdrop this month to sign his state\u2019s version of the law. (And get a little barbecue on the side.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to punish small businesses for just trying to do the right thing,\u201d Parson said at the restaurant ceremony. \u201cSo we\u2019ll move over here [to a table] and sign this into law. Or have ribs,\u201d he said, as he signed the official document sitting next to a platter of food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe liability shield laws themselves have discouraged plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers from trying to bring suits,\u201d said Torsten Kracht, an attorney with national law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He knew of no cases that had made it all the way through the legal process to a conclusion either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n