While many households and businesses are spending less in the wake of the COVID-19 economic crisis, one group has actually increased spending on advertising: Trial lawyers seeking plaintiffs for COVID-19-related lawsuits.
Victor Gomez, executive director of California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, has been sounding a warning over the increased spending, particularly with the potential negative economic effects a high number of lawsuits against small businesses could have.
“Originally, when these lawsuits started to get filed around the May timeframe, we saw a lot of focus around the cruise ship industry,” Gomez told the Northern California Record. “Nursing home lawsuits have now taken over, but there’s also been specific lawsuits filed by employees in the retail industry, meat processing plants, supermarkets and definitely health care providers.”
Where other states have put forward legal protections for businesses that have followed prescribed coronavirus procedures, California businesses are still vulnerable to litigation that would be illegal elsewhere. But, Gomez said that there are proposed bills that could offer Californian businesses some protection.
“I think we have about 80 bills that we’re just skimming through right now. But, there are some that have been introduced that do provide some COVID liability relief mixed into the bill,” Gomez said. “We’re assessing right now what those impacts actually are, but those are certainly things that we have been following.”
Gomez said that his organization has been particularly focused on liability protection, especially for small businesses.
“They are the ones that had the tougher time implementing the social distancing protocols in their businesses; those are the ones that don’t necessarily have corporate support to be able to implement social distancing in their facilities,” Gomez said. “Specifically, those are some of the issues that we want the state Legislature to help us.”
While the organization is hopeful that legislators will be sympathetic to the needs of small businesses and that Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign any liability protection bills that make it to him, it’s still too early in the legislative process to predict how things will progress, Gomez said.