Winning Lawsuits Over COVID Job Issues are Becoming More Common

NBA Ref Awarded $3M: Refused to be Jabbed

Big Media, Big Pharma and Big Government may try to tell citizens it is frivilous to file a lawsuit against COVID-19 employment matters, but they are wrong.

During the first year of the pandemic, March 2020 to August 2021. over 3,000 lawsuits related to COVID-19 were filed.

Did you hear about it in mainstream media?

Hundreds of those suits were brought as putative class or collective actions — a clear majority of which asserted wage and hour claims.

Within that year, about one-third of those cases were resolved ending in settlements.

● One such case was a class action suit filed in a Philadelphia court indicating a pharmaceutical company breached its promise to provide a 15-percent hazard pay premium at its vaccine plant through the course of the pandemic to technicians required to work 40 hours a week.

● In Ohio, restaurant servers revealed their employer began paying higher hourly wages as it revised its operations due to the pandemic so that it could receive forgiveness for loans it received from the Paycheck Protection Program.

Then they refused to allow the servers to keep their tips and failed to pay them overtime. The lawsuit, filed in an Ohio federal court in April 2020, was voluntarily dismissed a month later, due to private settlement.

Over 10,000 Cases

Today, over 10,106 cases have been filed since the beginning of the pandemic with California leading the nation with 2,522 lawsuits.

Following are New York (833), New Jersey (822), Florida (495), Michigan (493) and Ohio (483).

The number of cases per 1 million residents are led by New Jersey (93), Oregon (74), California (64), District of Columbia (62), Michigan (49), Conneticut (48), and New York (43). Notice they are Democrat controlled governed. (Source: COVID-19 Employment Litigation Tracker)

The healthcare industry represents 23% of the total cases. Government (13%), Retail (7%), Manufacturing (7%) and Education (6%) follow as highest percentage industries.

Interestingly, a recent study of legal decisions, including religious liberty cases, found that in more than three-quarters of the court decisions, judges refused to grant plaintiffs the relief requested.

This compares to an original study of the first 225 cases (excluding religious liberty claims) that were decided through June 29, 2021, that found that officials lost in 14.2 percent of cases and that there was evidence of partisan and ideological influence in those losses.

But all is not lost as plaintiffs gained some notable victories, especially in religious liberty cases and decisions issued by the United States Supreme Court.

Republican Governors Winning

Last week, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit over Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ decision to end pandemic-related jobless assistance early.

Iowa was one of about 25 states, all led by Republican governors, that elected to terminate the federal pandemic-related unemployment assistance before the programs expired in September 2021. These states did so in response to labor shortages, because the enhanced benefits were encouraging people to remain unemployed rather than return to the workforce.

“During the pandemic, the federal government attempted to pay able-bodied people to stay home instead of seeking employment to keep our economy on track,” Reynolds said.

“Republican governors around the country stood up to protect the livelihoods of our citizens, getting people back to work when it was desperately needed,” she continued. “In Iowa, we value hard work and recognize the dignity a good job can bring. I appreciate the court’s decision.”

In that case, Chief District Judge Stephanie Rose noted that participating in the federal CARES Act program was optional for each state.

$7 Million Settlement Exposed

Recently, the largest COVID nursing home fraud case in US history was settled when ReNew Health Group LLC agreed to a $7 million settlement to resolve allegations of submitting false Medicare claims.

Whistleblowers, brought the fraudulent activities to light, initiating a qui tam lawsuit. Under the False Claims Act, this allows private individuals to sue on behalf of the government when they have knowledge of an entity committing fraud against federal programs.

$3 Million Awarded to NBA Official

Take the recent case of Kenneth Mauer. He had been a National Basketball Association (NBA) official since 1986 but was told he had to be innoculated against the COVID-19 virus for the 2021-2022 season.

He gave his employers a request for exemption because of his religious beliefs. They denied the request.

Mauer was then suspended without pay or retirement benefits for the 2021-2022 season and was terminated in September of 2022.

New York federal judge J. Paul Oetken ruled in favor of Mauer in March 2024, granting summary judgment to him on his claim against the National Basketball Association Referees’ Pension Plan under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

Judge Oetken awarded Mauer $2.9 million, plus interest.

Mauer sought a lump sum payment of his retirement benefits but the NBA said another lawsuit he filed months earlier created a conflict with that request, as it could lead to his reinstatement.

“The Court sees no justification for treating the alleged uncertainty surrounding Mauer’s prospect of re-employment any differently than the uncertainty surrounding any former referee’s prospect of re-employment,” Oetken wrote.

“Accepting Defendants’ reading would discourage employees like Mauer from bringing claims for wrongful termination, as the commencement of such a lawsuit would entitle Defendants to withhold a plaintiff’s pension benefits until the resolution of that lawsuit, which could take years to run its course.”

Nebraska & Colorado

For the second time in a month a court has ruled COVID-19 can legally be considered an occupational disease.

This again clears the way for Workers’ Compensation benefits to be paid to employees who suffered from it.

Last month, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that COVID can be considered an occupational disease. The claimant in that case originally lost her arguments early before the state Supreme Court’s reversal.

On May 2, 2024, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled in the case of the late Vincent Gaines, who worked as a floor technician and a member of the housekeeping department at long-term nursing facility University Park Care Center.

Gaines contracted COVID in May 2020, two days after the first positive test of a resident. Two months later, the outbreak had caused 35 residents to become sick and eight die.

The staff had 13 known cases and nine probable ones. Gaines was hospitalized June 2, 2020, with acute respiratory failure with hypoxia due to pneumonia, then died a month later. His estate filed a Workers’ Compensation claim for death benefits.

The Administrative Law Judge granted the request, and University Park and Old Republic Insurance Company unsuccessfully appealed to a panel. The Court of Appeals affirmed in an opinion written by Judge Ted Tow III.

It was likely he contracted COVID at work and not elsewhere, the ruling says.

“(B)ecause Gaines’ exposure to COVID-19 was shown to have arisen out of his employment based on substantial evidence presented to the ALJ and upheld by the panel, his award of benefits should not be reversed on appeal ‘based upon some ill-defined policy considerations’ presented by the petitioners,” Tow wrote.

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