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A carpentry painter in the Bay Area stuck COVID on paintings and brought it home at the height of the pandemic. His wife, illness and symptoms were severe; At one point, he needed a ventilator to breathe.
But it can’t claim reimbursement from workers because of the infection, the California Supreme Court ruled in response to questions from a federal appeals court, because while that would be ethical intelligence, that intelligence is offset by the potential avalanche of litigation that forces corporations. To close, it blocks the courts and shoots up advertising insurance rates.
“Acknowledging the duty of care to non-employees in this context would impose an unbearable burden on employers and society in violation of public order,” Associate Judge Carol Corrigan wrote in the decision. “These and other policy considerations lead us to conclude that employers do not have a duty of non-contractual liability to non-employees to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “
This is the prime loss time for California workers seeking payment for COVID infections passed on to members of their family circle. Last year, a See’s Candies worker lost a workers’ reimbursement claim after contracting COVID and passed it on to her expired husband. .
Worker reimbursement is an inherently smart business, Corrigan wrote in a unanimous opinion: Employees have some guarantee that they will be paid for injuries, whether they are at fault or not, and employers can restrict the amount and scope of this reimbursement.
The question, therefore, is whether an employer’s legal responsibility to protect its staff from injury extends to their families. Today, the court did not. But the court left the door open to more lawsuits and ruled that spouses of staff who contract COVID can still file negligence claims against employers.
The facts of the case reflect the tug-of-war related to COVID regulations and business in the first year of the pandemic.
There is no doubt that Nevada-based Victory Woodworks ignored San Francisco County fitness orders that required employers to quarantine potentially inflamed employees, the court concluded. Robert Kuciemba was hired at a Victory Woodworks site for about two months when the company transferred a staffing organization to its San Francisco site in the summer of 2020. He ran near them and became inflamed.
His wife, Corby, caught him with COVID. She was over 65 and her condition worsened until she was put on a ventilator. The couple filed a lawsuit, arguing that Victory Woodworks’ negligence had caused their illness.
Although the Kuciembas filed a lawsuit in state court, Victory Woodworks referred the case to federal court, where it was dismissed, a victory for the carpentry shop and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. The U. S. Department of Justice, which filed briefs in its defense.
Victory Woodworks argued that a Kuciemba victory would have consequences far beyond compensation.
“There is simply no limit to the width of the network: the woman who says her husband hit her with COVID-19 on the supermarket counter, the husband who says his wife hit him with a scale in a nursing home,” the company said. He explained in a federal court filing.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sent two questions to the California Supreme Court. First, if California’s workers’ reimbursement law prohibits an employee’s family member from opposing an employer, and second, if the employer’s legal liability to its workers for COVID infections extends to the home.
During oral arguments in May, state Supreme Court justices expressed fear that a workers’ commission ruling in favor of Kuciemba would open the door to an “avalanche of litigation” against the companies.
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