Workers cannot sue over COVID spread to households, California court rules

[July 08, 2023]  By Daniel Wiessner
 
(Reuters) -Employers cannot be held liable when workers contract COVID-19 on the job and spread it to their household members, California's top court has ruled, siding with business groups that warned of a potential flood of litigation.  

People wear masks as they walk along a side walk after California lifted its regional stay-at-home orders across the state during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in California, U.S., January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake

The seven-member California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that allowing so-called "take-home COVID" claims could encourage businesses to adopt precautions that slow the delivery of services to the public or to shut down completely during pandemics.

A woman named Corby Kuciemba filed the lawsuit, saying she became seriously ill when her husband contracted COVID at his job with Nevada-based Victory Woodworks Inc in 2020 at a construction site in San Francisco and passed it to her.

A ruling in favor of Kuciemba would have turned every employer in California into a potential defendant, the court said, even when the company had taken reasonable steps to prevent the spread of the virus or when it is impossible to prove that employees contracted COVID at work.

"Even limiting a duty of care to employees' household members, the pool of potential plaintiffs would be enormous, numbering not thousands but millions of Californians," Justice Carol Corrigan wrote for the court.

William Bogdan, a lawyer representing Victory Woodworks, said the ruling was significant even though the pandemic is over because there is a two-year window under California law to sue for negligence.

"The court recognized that employers and the courts would be overwhelmed" if it allowed take home COVID lawsuits, Bogdan said.

A lawyer for Kuciemba did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The state court took the case after the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year asked it to decide whether California law recognizes negligence claims against employers when workers spread COVID to household members. The 9th Circuit is considering Kuciemba's bid to revive her lawsuit after it was dismissed by a federal judge. After Thursday's ruling, the 9th Circuit is expected to uphold that decision.

Business groups had argued that allowing "take-home COVID" claims could prompt lawsuits by an infected employee's family and friends, and anyone infected by that circle of people, creating a never-ending chain of liability.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner; Editing by Will Dunham, Alexia Garamfalvi and Richard Chang)

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