Will Lawmakers Provide Immunity to Businesses from COVID-19 Lawsuits?

As state and local governments take steps toward reopening the economy, business owners are rallying around the issue of liability immunity from COVID-19 lawsuits and organizing efforts aimed at pressuring federal and state lawmakers to enact legislation limiting liability from lawsuits filed by workers and customers infected by COVID-19. The stakes are high. Because the complete clinical picture regarding COVID-19 is not fully understood, big and small businesses alike are targets for opportunistic lawsuits. When symptoms may not develop for days after the fact, just…
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Reasonably Prudent and COVID-19

Hyperbole aside, the impacts from COVID-19 have been pervasive, touching all aspects of our society. Commentators continue to identify just how far and wide these impacts have been, and it will likely take a number of years for us all to truly understand the breadth of the changes being wrought, including in the legal industry generally, and in litigation specifically. As life science companies and their counsel know full-well, a critical component of tort law in many jurisdictions is the concept of the “reasonable person”…
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Are We Going to Clean Ourselves Sick?

It wouldn’t be going out on the proverbial limb to say that people are using all sorts of cleaning and disinfecting products with significantly greater frequency and regularity than they have at any other time in history. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for April 20, 2020 contains the article, “Cleaning and Disinfectant Chemical Exposures and Temporal Associations with COVID-19.” This article describes an analysis of data from exposures reported to the National Poison Data System and…
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