The Law Office of Martin T. Montilino is a personal injury law firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota that works with individuals who have been hurt due to the negligence or neglect of another person or party. One area of personal injury law that has been getting a lot of attention in the media lately are personal injury lawsuits related to Covid-19. Businesses have been pushing lawmakers to shield them from lawsuits related to the coronavirus, and the debate has even stalled economic relief discussions in Congress. Business groups and organizations want protection from coronavirus related lawsuits. They don’t want sick people who ate at their establishment, who patronized their business, or who attended their school turning around and suing them. However, in places where such lawsuit protections have been put in place, there have been concerns raised from workers and the general public that lawsuits give workers and the public no recourse when businesses, schools, and other organizations flagrantly ignore state and local coronavirus laws and recommendations.
According to the New York Times, businesses, schools, and hospitals have asked for Covid-19 protections, which would make it illegal for a person to sue a school, business, or hospital if they contract coronavirus on a property or establishment that failed to take protective and safety measures. These business groups are worried that they’ll face a flurry of new lawsuits. The reality is that the mass of lawsuits that they are claiming will happen hasn’t taken place. People can’t just sue a bar because they come down with Covid-19 a week after having a drink there.
Covid-19 lawsuits are for serious situations where an outbreak in a community is directly related to a business, school, hospital, or organization that fails to follow the law, take proper preventative measures, and put proper sanitation procedures in place. Covid-19 lawsuits are for situations where workers are made to work in close quarters with no personal protective equipment in the middle of an outbreak, or for a business establishment that doesn’t require patrons or workers to wear masks despite local orders to the contrary, or a college that stays open and doesn’t take safety measures despite an outbreak and despite closure orders. Lawsuits, in these special cases, may be able to offer workers and the general public relief, and also encourage businesses and organizations to take steps to follow the law and to take basic steps to keep people safe: like performing proper sanitation, encouraging mask wearing, and putting in place common-sense disease-preventing measures (like plastic shields at registers, limiting the number of people in the store at one time, and enforcing social distancing in lines). The Law Office of Martin T. Montilino is a personal injury law firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota that is closely watching lawmakers as pressure mounts on both sides of this issue. As it stands, Covid-19 lawsuits would need to be very specific and targeted, but there are cases where they may be warranted. Do you think you got sick because a business failed to take proper safety measures after the Covid-19 outbreak was in full swing? Are you a worker who got sick and you feel you got sick because your employer failed to take basic safety precautions regarding Covid-19? Were sick people at your job asked to report to work? Are you a parent concerned about sending your child back to a college that has asked your child to sign a liability waiver? (Many schools that are planning to re-open in the fall have asked their students to sign liability waivers which require students to give up important rights just so they can return to school—a move that has concerned some lawyers and one that has been written about in NPR). And it’s not just schools that may be asking clients to sign these waivers. Dentists and even hair dressers may be asking clients to sign waivers. And signing these waivers can mean giving up important rights should the business actually be liable for your injury or illness.
The Law Office of Martin T. Montilino is a personal injury law firm that is closely monitoring this situation. If you believe that the negligence of a business or employer (failure to enforce mask wearing, failure to enforce social distancing, or other action) led to your contracting Covid-19, the Law Office of Martin T. Montilino, personal injury lawyers in Minneapolis, Minnesota would like to hear from you. Covid-19 lawsuits may be very difficult to win because the person pursuing the lawsuit would need to prove that they got the disease from a specific establishment and as a direct result of the establishment’s failure to comply with local laws and guidance regarding the outbreak. Yet, there have been cases of employees and individuals suing when businesses failed to take steps to protect workers and patrons. The Law Office of Martin T. Montilino is here to help in these egregious cases. Reach out to us, or connect with USAttorneys.com who can put you in touch with the personal injury lawyer at the Law Office of Martin T. Montilino.