Georgia lawmakers: Block COVID-19 lawsuits against business
Georgia lawmakers want to protect businesses and other from being sued if someone blames them for contracting COVID-19, but House members voted Friday for less-extensive protections than the business community sought.
House members voted 104-56 to approve Senate Bill 359, sending it back to the Senate for more debate in the closing hours of the 2020 legislative session.
“People need to be able to get back to work, and the way people get back to work is businesses feeling comfortable opening themselves up,” said House Majority Whip Trey Kelley, a Cedartown Republican.
The bill is the result of weeks of haggling among lawmakers, business groups and plaintiff’s lawyers. The Senate on Tuesday approved a bill that would have made it even harder to sue, adopting the business community’s preferred language.
Democrats argued that the bill is overly broad and should, at most, protect health care institutions. House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, a Luthersville Democrat, said the bill risked letting businesses off the hook for safety.
“Let me tell you something: businesses don’t get COVID, people get COVID,” Trammell said. “This bill doesn’t seek to protect people against COVID, it seeks to protect businesses against people.”
Trammell argued lawmakers should instead be seeking to provide better protections for frontline workers.
“We need to be legislating about public health measures that will keep people safe,” Trammell said.
Under the language approved Friday, a business, health care provider or protected entity would have to display gross negligence, “willful and wanton misconduct” or reckless or intentional infliction of harm to lose a lawsuit.
That’s higher than the regular standard of negligence, but the Senate had removed even gross negligence, leading opponents to argue that it would be almost impossible to win a lawsuit.