Premises Liability in Restaurants For COVID-19 Infections in California
COVID-19 continues to be a global pandemic with little sign of slowing down. While a vaccine may prove effective to slow the spread of this infectious virus, many people continue to receive the diagnosis that they were exposed and must now isolate at home and hope that their symptoms do not become life-threatening. When the federal government, as well as the state of California, made the decision to open businesses back up for public use, customers discovered that they became infected at places of business. Restaurants were not immune, and many patrons of bars and restaurants became infected as a result of being in close contact with others without masks as they ate. If you discovered that you received a positive COVID-19 test after visiting a restaurant, do you have the legal right to pursue compensation and damages from the restaurant for the contraction of COVID-19?
Premises Liability Law
Property owners and business establishments have a legal responsibility under the law to ensure that their premises is safe from hazards and dangers. Premises liability often refers to physical dangers that may be present on a property that may result in slip and fall injuries. These types of accidents occur often on poorly lit staircases, or loose rugs or cracked pavements. However, it can be argued that if a restaurant fails to post proper warnings about COVID-19, or fails to ensure that their employees all wear masks at all times, that the restaurant could have failed to take the proper steps to avoid the dangerous and life-threatening illness of COVID-19.
Building a COVID-19 Premises Liability Case
In order to build a premises liability case, a victim has to prove that the negligent party had a duty and responsibility to them to keep them safe. In the instance of a restaurant, it can be argued that because COVID-19 is not only a national, but an international pandemic, any person visiting the restaurant would have a reasonable understanding that they are placing themselves at a higher risk of infection due to the close quarters and the inability to keep a mask on while you eat. A victim will also have to prove that the restaurant acted negligently in some way by failing to clean appropriately or distance the tables far enough apart. Additionally, the victim will have to prove that they received the COVID-19 infection directly from that restaurant and not from a different place they visited in a similar time, such as a grocery store, or picking their child up from school. If a victim can prove that a restaurant has a unique duty to ensure that their customers do not contract COVID-19 and that they failed in their duty somehow to provide a safe environment according to reasonable standards, a victim must then still prove that their COVID-19 diagnosis was directly related to their patronage at that particular restaurant.
Current Wrongful Death Lawsuits
The current wrongful death lawsuits related to COVID-19 relate to employees of businesses that contracted the virus as a result of the failure of their employer to properly warn them of the dangers or provide appropriate safety equipment. These wrongful death lawsuits include claims against Walmart (Evans v. Walmart, Inc., No. 2020L003938), Carnival Cruise LInes (Archer v. Carnival Corporation, et al., No. 20-cv-02381).
However, certain businesses also faced wrongful death lawsuits from persons that were not employees, such as the family members of victims that died as a result of the lack of safety precautions taken by nursing homes. If these types of lawsuits are any indication, it is possible and highly probable that patrons of other businesses will attempt to file a claim against different restaurants and other retail establishments for failure to sanitize, failure to warn, and failure to prevent exposure to COVID-19.
Proposed Federal Legislation to Protect Restaurants and Other Businesses
The legal landscape in which we all find ourselves is completely new. There has never before been any kind of global pandemic on this large of a scale in modern history. While pandemics existed in previous times, they did not converge with the ability of people to travel along with the societal expectations of social interactions of today. As a result, people have been impatient to return to their previous ways of life, including patronizing and visiting restaurants and gathering with friends. As a result, COVID-19 infection rates continue to surge. Whether or not restaurants and other business establishments should shoulder the burden of increased infection rates and deaths from COVID-19 remains to be seen.
In response to this nexus of business interest and societal interest, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a federal measure to attempt to limit the liability of corporations and businesses as it relates to COVID-19. Lawmakers are now advocating for limits on the legal implications and liability that business owners should carry in order to protect them against these exact types of premises liability lawsuits. Many businesses feel compelled to open their shuttered doors to bring in revenue and a semblance of normalcy back to our world, however, they fear that they will be immediately thrust into litigation from patrons who contract COVID-19 if they do so. At this time, there is no firm consensus regarding the way the rudder of this legal ship will turn. Certainly, the public has a right to protection from dangerous viruses, and certainly, businesses have the right to protect themselves from lawsuits about which they could not prevent through any real actions of their own. Time will tell whether or not the federal laws will pass and what the legal liabilities of restaurants will be in the state of California.
Contact an Experienced Attorney Today
If you discover that you developed COVID-19 after visiting a restaurant that blatantly refused to provide even the basic sanitation measures, social distancing, or enforcement of mask-wearing, you may have the legal right to pursue a claim against the restaurant. Contact the experienced attorneys at Castillo & Associates either online or at 800-497-9774 today to learn more about your legal rights.
Attorney Domingo Castillo handles workers’ compensation, personal injury, family law & immigration throughout Southern California from our 5 offices: Indio, Pomona, Riverside, San Diego & Cathedral City. We help clients file injury claims, obtain residency & citizenship, and we assist families through divorce, child custody and all family law matters.
