Suits Filed against Family Members’ Employers for Secondhand Virus Transmission

The ABA Journal shares this story from Reuters about recent lawsuits filed by secondhand coronavirus victims. These cases, which were both filed in Illinois, allege that the employers of the victims’ family members are liable to the victims for their contraction of COVID. Typically, the only recourse for those who are injured on the job is Worker’s Compensation, a no-fault system that usually caps the damages at a level lower than a claimant could receive as a plaintiff in a lawsuit. However, workers’ family members are not bound to go through Worker’s Comp.

The plaintiffs argue that the workplaces were negligent in protecting their workers from COVID, resulting in their family member contracting coronavirus, and that the victim’s subsequent contraction of the virus from the family member once they came home was a resulting harm. As the article points out, these plaintiffs have a difficult legal road ahead. However, there does exist precedent for these sorts of cases in asbestos litigation, and if plaintiffs prevail in these cases, this area represents a source of substantial worry to many companies (and their insurance companies):

The lawsuits will be patterned after asbestos cases in which family members became ill after workers came home with asbestos fibers on their clothes.

One lawsuit, filed in August by the daughter of Esperanza Ugalde of Illinois, alleges that Ugalde died from COVID-19 that her father contracted at the Aurora Packing Co.’s meat processing plant.

The Kane County Chronicle had coverage of the lawsuit.

Lawyers think the Aurora Packing Co. case is the first wrongful death “take-home” lawsuit, according to Reuters.

A second lawsuit alleges that Miriam Alvarez Reynoso contracted COVID-19 from her husband, a parts assembler, and had “serious injuries to multiple organs.” Reynoso said she became sick while caring for her husband, who worked at Byrne & Schaefer Inc. in Lockport, Illinois.

The Herald-News had coverage.

. . . .

The “causal chain” will be an issue in the cases, according to lawyers who spoke with Reuters. Plaintiffs will have to show that businesses failed to implement safety measures, which led a worker to get sick and to infect the family member. The plaintiff will have to show that the worker took precautions to prevent coming ill from other sources.

Successful plaintiffs in COVID-19 cases won’t be subject to the caps on liability that employees face under the workers’ compensation system, the article points out.

“Businesses should be very concerned about these cases,” said labor and employment attorney Tom Gies of Crowell & Moring, in an interview with Reuters.

I’m not aware of any such lawsuits being filed in Arkansas yet, but if suits like this are successful, that will likely change.