Author: Burton E. Falk
Last week the California Supreme Court made a pivotal ruling that could have significant implications for your responsibilities as employers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Court clarified that employers do not owe a tort-based duty to non-employees to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to family members under workers’ compensation laws. In making this critical decision, the court made two separate rulings:
The Court held that the exclusivity provisions of the Workers Compensation Act do not bar a nonemployee’s recovery for injuries that are not legally dependent upon an injury suffered by the employee.
The Court held that an employer does not owe a duty of care to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to employees’ household members.
In the case at issue, the employer (Victory) was alleged to have created a risk of infection by transferring exposed workers to the husband’s jobsite in violation of a county health order. This resulted in the husband catching COVID and transmitting it to his wife, who then sued Victory. Prior courts had a rule (called the “derivative injury rule”) that basically said if an employee’s family member got hurt because of the employee’s work-related injury, the family member couldn’t sue you, the employer.
Now the California Supreme Court has clarified the “derivative injury rule” and held that workers’ compensation remedies do not bar a spouse’s claim for her own independent injury even if both injuries were caused by the same negligent conduct of the employer, because the wife’s claim for COVID is not legally (as opposed to factually) dependent on her husband’s COVID injuries. The court held that the wife need only to show that her husband was exposed to the virus at the workplace and carried it home to her.
An employer must now show that a third-party claim is both factually (meaning “but for” causation) and legally or logically dependent on the other spouse’s injuries to be barred by the “derivative injury rule.” The Court thus disapproved of prior case law that held that a causal link was all that was sufficient to bar any claim under the derivative injury rule. This new ruling may expose employers to more third party claims by limiting the derivative injury rule.
However, the Court upheld the lower federal court’s dismissal of the COVID-19 transmission claim, stating that the employer’s duty does not extend to preventing transmission of COVID to family members because of practical policy considerations such as the employers’ inability to enforce safety protocols (such as mask wearing and social distancing) outside the workplace, and the possible slowdown or cessation in the delivery of essential services to the public by exposure to liability.
In the end, the court warned that imposing a duty on employers towards household members of employees could potentially lead to an excessive burden on the judicial system by opening the “floodgates” of litigation, and could result in employers adopting overly cautious measures that could hinder the delivery of essential services. However, employers must remain cautious about extending this ruling to other “take-home” diseases, such as mesothelioma. The Court made it clear that this decision is specific to COVID-19 transmission.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us: Nicholas P. Roxborough (npr@rpnalaw.com), Vincent S. Gannuscio (vsg@rpnalaw.com) or Burton E. Falk (bef@rpnalaw.com). We may also be reached at 818-992-9999.
