Unsanitized: There Is No Flood of COVID Lawsuits Against Businesses

Also, how coronavirus deaths are proceeding. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for July 16, 2020.

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First Response

All we know right now, through vague assurances, is that there will be another coronavirus relief bill. It will probably have enhanced unemployment benefits—given that 36 million Americans are taking them right now and it’s the only thing holding up retail sales, I should think so—but nobody knows how much. It might have money for state and local governments—given that the CARES Act funding was so limited and restricted that states and cities are fighting with one another for it, I should think so—but nobody knows how much. It might have another stimulus check, but nobody knows for whom (i.e. where the income threshold will land). And it will have “compromise,” whatever that means.

Republicans have not come to a consensus on the bill, which is being written in Mitch McConnell’s office, just like last time, and only then presented to Democrats. It’s pretty clear they want financial incentives for schools to reopen in the fall. We know the White House wants insane things like a capital gains tax cut. But aside from Trump obsessions, the big ask bringing Republicans to the table is a full liability release for businesses and hospitals whose workers or customers or patients contract COVID-19. Combined with the lack of an emergency workplace standard from OSHA, this would be a license to turn storefronts and factories and offices into death traps, with no attention paid to the measures necessary to keep people safe.

It’s necessary, Mitch McConnell and his colleagues say, because of a “flood” of frivolous lawsuits crushing businesses and threatening economic recovery. So it’s important to say this clearly and out loud: there is no crisis of COVID-19 litigation. It’s made-up, it doesn’t exist, it’s a ploy to get businesses out of paying for compliance. That’s entirely it.

Read all of our Unsanitized reports

We have all the evidence we need on this. Hunton Andrews Kurth, a law firm, has been dutifully tracking COVID-19 complaints at its website for all to see. As of today, it shows 3,521 “complaints,” but the majority of those involve petitions for prisoner release and fights over insurance claims, as well as consumer and contract disputes. Under “labor and employment” there are a grand total of 302 cases, total, across the entire country.

There are 616 “civil rights” claims, and while most of those are challenges to stay-at-home orders, a couple of those might be business-related. At least one high-profile workplace case, against Tyson and JBS meatpacking plants, is being contested under the Civil Rights Act. The claim is that the largely Black and Latino workforces were not protected due to racial discrimination, compared to the mostly white managers. But that’s a very particular situation.

If you’re talking about the kind of cases that McConnell claims are “flooding” courts—“conditions of employment” cases alleging wrongful death, exposure to COVID-19, or a lack of personal protective equipment—there are 67 such cases. There are 33 wrongful death cases in the “Health/Medical” section but almost all of them have been filed against nursing homes. There are 6 malpractice cases, only one a COVID-19 misdiagnosis that resulted in death (three others are about nursing homes). There’s exactly one (1) miscellaneous wrongful death tort case outside the labor and health sections.

So 36 million people are collecting unemployment benefits, and the thing that has the Republican Party really exercised is 107 lawsuits. Those will be contested in courts that are generally hostile to consumer and worker claims, especially if they rise to the corporate-friendly Supreme Court. The supreme irony here is that America doesn’t award workers or patients or customers much of anything, almost ever, in litigation, which is protected by arbitration agreements and right-wing judges. It would be a non-problem even if the alleged flood were on the shores. But the relative trickle makes it completely farcical.

McConnell is trying to spare companies the expense, not from losing cases because they won’t, not from litigating a lot of cases because they don’t exist, but from having to litigate anything, and from having to make cosmetic changes to workplaces so they appear at all safer. That’s all that’s going on here.

Odds and Sods

Have I mentioned that I have a book coming out? Next week, Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power officially releases. I hear it’s in some stores and is shipping already. Don’t miss out on your copy! You can order here. While it was written entirely before the pandemic, I feel it still has a lot to say about it, given that we’re moving even further in the direction of handing over entire sectors to a handful of companies.

Speaking of which, Chapter 1 of the book is about the airlines, and today Alex Sammon has a great piece about the airline bailout, which asked almost nothing of the major carriers and is now effectively paying them to spread the coronavirus. Read here.

All of our coronavirus coverage is at prospect.org/coronavirus. And send me your thoughts and tips via email.

The Death March

Alexis Madrigal has a piece at The Atlantic saying that the coronavirus death surge is coming right on schedule, up in the states where the surge is most pronounced: Florida, Texas, Arizona. I should say that there are signs of cases hitting a plateau or falling in all three of those states, though at least in Arizona’s case that appears linked to faltering testing. Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina don’t look great right now. In South Carolina, deaths have begun to trend down, and California as well. Tennessee and Mississippi are on a downslope too, and the other states I check are pretty flat. Overall, in aggregate, deaths have been down on the seven-day rolling average the past two days. (That's in part due to elevated cases out of the July 4 holiday, so the comparison is easier.)

As I’ve said, given the delays in testing and the haphazard at best statistics from the states, it’s hard to know what to make of a lot of the curves, but the best guess right now is that this is a three-state problem that’s starting to become a deep South problem, as the three states start to recognize the gravity of the situation. We’re not near the levels of April in terms of deaths and we’re not yet showing indications that we’ll get there. But there’s plenty to work through, and there are many fates short of death that are awful. Wear a mask.

Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

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Today I Learned

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