California Court Rules Employees Can’t Sue Employers for ‘Take Home COVID’

Nurses look at information with a doctor at the Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Health and Wellness, within the William Osler Health System, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brampton, Ont., on March 26, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette)

California’s top state court has ruled that employees can’t sue their employers when workers contract COVID-19 on the job and spread it to their household members, siding with business groups who won’t be held liable.

The seven-member California Supreme Court on July 6 unanimously ruled 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.

According to the couple’s complaint, Corby Kuciemba had filed the lawsuit, saying she became seriously ill in the hospital after her husband contracted COVID at his job with Victory Woodworks Inc in 2020 and passed it to her before COVID-19 vaccines were available.

She alleged that Victory Woodworks had been aware of workers falling ill with COVID-19 at another work site in California but had nonetheless transferred workers from that site to the San Francisco site, where they worked close to her husband.

A medical professional administers a coronavirus (covid-19) test at a drive thru testing location conducted by staffers from the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) in the parking lot of the Bolinas Fire Department in Bolinas, Calif.,on April 20, 2020. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

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

“In some cases, ‘the consequences of a negligent act must be limited to avoid an intolerable burden on society,’” Justice Carol Corrigan wrote in the court’s unanimous ruling, quoting from a prior decision. “This is such a case.”

“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,” he added in the ruling.

The court found that workers’ compensation laws in the state do not preclude such claims. But companies also cannot be held legally responsible for preventing such infections, it said, given the tremendous burden such a requirement would place — not just on the companies but on the courts and on society as a whole.

That is true even in cases in which an individual company may have shown negligence by failing to adhere to established health and safety standards, the court said.

The ruling was a major win for Victory Woodworks Inc., but also for other major employers and business organizations across the state, which had warned that a court ruling in the Kuciembas’ favor would have unleashed an unmanageable flow of COVID-19 claims against employers.

“This potential avalanche of lawsuits would cripple California businesses and likely force many to close their doors or leave the state,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups had argued in a joint filing in the case.

The 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 a California federal judge dismissed it. After Thursday’s ruling, the 9th Circuit will most likely uphold that decision.

Throughout the court’s decision Thursday, Corrigan seemed hyper-aware of the massive implications of the court finding that companies are responsible for preventing COVID-19 infections among their employees and their employee’s family members.

“In addition to dire financial consequences for employers, and a possibly broader social impact, the potential litigation explosion facilitated by a duty to prevent COVID-19 infections in household members would place significant burdens on the judicial system and, ultimately, the community,” Corrigan wrote.

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.

William Bogdan, an attorney for Victory Woodworks, said the company was pleased with the decision.

“They are, of course, sympathetic to anybody who claims that they got sick, but they recognize, as the Supreme Court recognized, that to have businesses be responsible for a disease that’s everywhere would cripple them,” Bogdan said.

“The court recognized that the proof problems and the amount of litigation that would be required before a court could even consider whether to dismiss a case would bring the business of the courts to a crawl,” Bogdan added.