Unsanitized: The COVID-19 Report for July 16, 2020

There Is No Flood of COVID Lawsuits Against Businesses
Also, how coronavirus deaths are proceeding

 

The Supreme Court, one of many courtrooms not hearing cases about
businesses allowing workers or customers to be infected with
coronavirus. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)

First Response

All we know right now, through vague assurances, is that there will be
another coronavirus relief bill. It will probably have enhanced
unemployment benefits
-given
that 36 million Americans are taking them

right now and it's the only thing holding up retail sales
,
I should think so-but nobody knows how much. It might have money for
state and local governments-given that the CARES Act funding was so
limited and restricted that states and cities are fighting with one
another for it
,
I should think so-but nobody knows how much. It might have another
stimulus check, but nobody knows for whom (i.e. where the income
threshold will land). And it will have "compromise
,"
whatever that means.

Republicans have not come to a consensus

on the bill, which is being written in Mitch McConnell's office, just
like last time, and only then presented to Democrats. It's pretty
clear they want financial incentives for schools
to reopen in the fall. We know the White House
wants insane things

like a capital gains tax cut. But aside from Trump obsessions, the big
ask bringing Republicans to the table is a full liability release for
businesses and hospitals

whose workers or customers or patients contract COVID-19. Combined with
the lack of an emergency workplace standard from OSHA, this would be a
license to turn storefronts and factories and offices into death traps,
with no attention paid to the measures necessary to keep people safe.

It's necessary, Mitch McConnell and his colleagues say, because of a
"flood" of frivolous lawsuits crushing businesses and threatening
economic recovery. So it's important to say this clearly and out loud:
there is no crisis of COVID-19 litigation. It's made-up, it doesn't
exist, it's a ploy to get businesses out of paying for compliance.
That's entirely it.

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We have all the evidence we need on this. Hunton Andrews Kurth, a law
firm, has been dutifully tracking COVID-19 complaints
at its website for
all to see. As of today, it shows 3,521 "complaints," but the majority
of those involve petitions for prisoner release and fights over
insurance claims, as well as consumer and contract disputes. Under
"labor and employment" there are a grand total of 302 cases, total,
across the entire country.

There are 616 "civil rights" claims, and while most of those are
challenges to stay-at-home orders, a couple of those might be
business-related. At least one high-profile workplace case, against
Tyson and JBS meatpacking plants
,
is being contested under the Civil Rights Act. The claim is that the
largely Black and Latino workforces were not protected due to racial
discrimination, compared to the mostly white managers. But that's a
very particular situation.

If you're talking about the kind of cases that McConnell claims are
"flooding" courts-"conditions of employment" cases alleging wrongful
death, exposure to COVID-19, or a lack of personal protective
equipment-there are 67 such cases. There are 33 wrongful death cases
in the "Health/Medical" section but almost all of them have been filed
against nursing homes. There are 6 malpractice cases, only one a
COVID-19 misdiagnosis that resulted in death (three others are about
nursing homes). There's exactly one (1) miscellaneous wrongful death
tort case outside the labor and health sections.

So 36 million people are collecting unemployment benefits, and the thing
that has the Republican Party really exercised is 107 lawsuits. Those
will be contested in courts that are generally hostile to consumer and
worker claims, especially if they rise to the corporate-friendly Supreme
Court. The supreme irony here is that America doesn't award workers or
patients or customers much of anything, almost ever, in litigation,
which is protected by arbitration agreements and right-wing judges. It
would be a non-problem even if the alleged flood were on the shores. But
the relative trickle makes it completely farcical.

McConnell is trying to spare companies the expense, not from losing
cases because they won't, not from litigating a lot of cases because
they don't exist, but from having to litigate anything, and from
having to make cosmetic changes to workplaces so they appear at all
safer. That's all that's going on here.

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Odds and Sods

Have I mentioned that I have a book coming out? Next week, Monopolized:
Life in the Age of Corporate Power officially releases. I hear it's in
some stores and is shipping already. Don't miss out on your copy! You
can order here
. While
it was written entirely before the pandemic, I feel it still has a lot
to say about it, given that we're moving even further in the direction
of handing over entire sectors to a handful of companies.

Speaking of which, Chapter 1 of the book is about the airlines, and
today Alex Sammon has a great piece

about the airline bailout, which asked almost nothing of the major
carriers and is now effectively paying them to spread the coronavirus.
Read here
.

All of our coronavirus coverage is at prospect.org/coronavirus
. And send me your thoughts and tips
via email .

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The Death March

Alexis Madrigal has a piece at The Atlantic

saying that the coronavirus death surge is coming right on schedule, up
in the states where the surge is most pronounced: Florida
, Texas
, Arizona
. I should say that there
are signs of cases hitting a plateau or falling in all three of those
states, though at least in Arizona's case that appears linked to
faltering testing. Georgia
, Alabama
and North Carolina
don't look great
right now. In South Carolina, deaths have begun to trend down
, and California as
well . Tennessee
and Mississippi
are on a downslope
too, and the other states I check are pretty flat. Overall, in
aggregate, deaths have been down on the seven-day rolling average
the past two days.

As I've said, given the delays in testing and the haphazard at best
statistics from the states, it's hard to know what to make of a lot of
the curves, but the best guess right now is that this is a three-state
problem that's starting to become a deep South problem, as the three
states start to recognize the gravity of the situation. We're not near
the levels of April in terms of deaths and we're not yet showing
indications that we'll get there. But there's plenty to work
through, and there are many fates short of death that are awful. Wear a
mask.

Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

111
.

We Can't Do This Without You

Today I Learned

* Oklahoma's Kevin Stitt becomes the first U.S. governor to test
positive

for coronavirus. (Tulsa World)

* Brian Kemp, meanwhile, blocking mask orders

in cities. (CBS Marketwatch)

* Black business owners found it harder to get PPP applications approved

than white business owners. (National Community Reinvestment Coalition)

* The SBA listed the wrong Congressional district for 226,000 PPP loans
.
What a garbage federal agency. (Bloomberg)

* The Postal Service is deliberately delaying the mail
,
and combine this with mail-in voting and it looks like a strategy
.
(Washington Post)

* New Jersey is in particular trouble right now

because it doesn't collect state taxes on unemployment. (CNBC)

* CARES Act benefits, four months later, still not reaching people
who
qualify for them. (The Intercept)

* The financial hardship
of
having a dead COVID-19 family member. (The Appeal)

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