Family can sue over job COVID exposure
Justice Helen Bendix said in the 3-0 ruling.
It was apparently the first decision by a California appellate court on an employer’s responsibility for coronavirus that a worker transmitted to family members.
Matilda Ek worked in a See’s Candies packing plant in Los Angeles County and said in her suit that the company crowded workers close to one another, including some who were coughing and sneezing, after the start of the pandemic. She became ill in March 2020 and was cared for at home by her husband, Martin Ek, and one of their daughters, who both were diagnosed with COVID a few weeks later, the suit said. Martin Ek died in April 2020.
See’s, supported by filings from state and nationwide business organizations, sought to dismiss the suit. The company argued that under workers’ compensation law, it was responsible only for workers’ compensation coverage of injuries or illnesses suffered by its employees at work and not for harm to others, even if they were infected by an employee.
The appeals court disagreed, upholding a Superior Court judge’s refusal to dismiss the case. The court said workers’ compensation, which does not require proof of negligence, applies only to losses suffered by the injured worker and any resulting financial harm to family members. Non-employees who suffer their own injuries as a result of the employer’s alleged misconduct can sue for damages, including a relative’s wrongful death, the court said.
If the court accepted the company’s argument, Bendix observed in the ruling, it would have to shield employers from damage claims by bus passengers infected by an employee who had unknowingly contracted an illness at work.
She cited the state Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling allowing a suit against an employer by a child who suffered brain damage before birth when her pregnant mother was exposed to carbon monoxide from a defective floor-buffing machine at work. In a 2016 case, the state’s high court said that when employees came home from work with asbestos dust on their clothing, and their family members later came down with cancer, the employer could be sued for damages.
This May, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney of San Francisco dismissed a similar suit by a San Francisco woman who said she was hospitalized with COVID-19 that her husband, a construction worker, had caught on the job. But the appeals court said the ruling was not binding on state courts and did not state reasons for the dismissal.
Lawyers for See’s Candies declined to comment on the ruling, which they could appeal to the state Supreme Court. Lawyers for the family could not be reached for comment.