Contrary to all prior Federal circuit courts that have decided the question, the Texas Supreme Court, in Texas Mut. Ins. Co. v. PHI Air Medical, LLC, 2020 WL 3477002, has decided that the Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) does not
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Chicago Illinois McDonald’s Workers Win Partial Preliminary Injunction on Public Nuisance Theory
Two things have emerged with respect to the new public nuisance filings. First, plaintiffs seem to be doing better in state than federal courts, which is an outcome I anticipated. Second, trial level judges do not seem to be…
Another McDonald’s Covid-19 Case: Oakland, California Workers Win Preliminary Injunction on Public Nuisance Theory
All the stars aligned for a worker-filed a public nuisance suit–at least chapter one of the suit–the most important of which were probably that the case was brought in a California state court and involved California code law rather…
New Center for Progressive Reform Report on Protecting Workers in a Pandemic
I am co-author –with Tom McGarity of University of Texas School of Law and Sid Shapiro of Wake Forest Law — of a new report titled, "Protecting Workers in a Pandemic: What the Federal Government Should Be Doing." The report…
Meatpacking Plant Chaos—No Wonder They Want Immunity
As I read through Michael Grabell, Claire Perlman and Bernice Yeung’s ProPublica article on COVID-19 chaos in the meatpacking plants I kept thinking three things:A broad liability shield is a really bad idea.Yes, I do think I could win these…
Pandemic Heroes Compensation Act of 2020: My Preliminary Observations on the Proposed Bill
While I suspect that workers’ compensation claims, even without the aid of workers’ compensation causation presumptions, may fare better than some actuaries suspected (preliminary scuttlebutt of about a 40% success rate is higher than I expected), there is no reasonable…
What Exactly is a Liability Shield?
In today’s the Hill a story ran containing in part the following language:More than a thousand COVID-19 lawsuits have been filed in the past six weeks, prompting business groups to refocus almost all their lobbying efforts on securing liability protections…
Pennsylvania Insurance Drama: New Third Circuit Case Says WC Policy Rescission Actions are for the Admin. Tribunal, but Larson Would Say, Correctly, that They Shouldn’t be Permitted at All
The Third Circuit, in a non-precedential decision, has affirmed a district court ruling dismissing a workers’ compensation carrier’s declaratory judgment action seeking rescission of the policy it had written for its insured. The appellate panel agreed with the trial…
Workers’ Compensation and Public Nuisance: Two Caveats
In previous posts I have been arguing that employees could probably not succeed in public nuisance suits because of the exclusive remedy rule. But that leads to an additional problem: suppose COVID-19 is categorically not covered by workers’ compensation in…
Examining the Recently-Filed New York Amazon Public Nuisance Suit
Another public nuisance lawsuit has made the news. On Wednesday, June 3, Make the Road New York, Public Justice, and the Terrell Marshall Law Group of Seattle, WA filed a lawsuit on behalf of Derrick Palmer, Kendia…