Ohio governor signs law giving businesses/organizations protection from COVID civil liability suits
List of protected organizations includes schools - almost certainly to be extended to their athletic activities. Law states organizations are immune to liability except for cases of "reckless, intentional, or willful misconduct." It will be interesting to see how those are defined - especially if the exposure can be proved to occur during the course of work/school activities.
September 15th, 2020 at 7:14 AM ^
"In response to this development, three more 5-star, top-100 football recruits committed to Ohio State."
September 15th, 2020 at 7:25 AM ^
They really missed the boat by not calling it the Hairless Nut Institute.
September 15th, 2020 at 7:26 AM ^
I believe 10-15 states already have similar laws in place. You have to assume all 50 will sooner or later as they don't want their schools, businesses, churches, or state institutions to be under constant threat of litigation.
September 15th, 2020 at 8:16 AM ^
Can you imagine a world where businesses and churches could be held legally responsible for their decisions?
September 15th, 2020 at 8:31 AM ^
You could expand that to include all branches of government.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:07 AM ^
An overly punitive liability environment, whereby businesses, churches etc. are at constant threat of being sued means businesses shut down a lot (or never get off the ground) over small irrelevant things. That's not the environment we want.
My liability insurance renews in a month for my business. The premiums doubled. Not good.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:17 AM ^
Sounds like you should be an advocate for legal and insurance reform.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:35 AM ^
You sound like someone who has many strong political views about a topic with little to no real world experience in dealing with it.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:39 AM ^
That's an interesting opinion you have.
September 15th, 2020 at 11:18 AM ^
1.) What do you do, broadly speaking? Premiums doubling sounds pretty remarkable. Did you get hit with a judgment or something recently?
2.) Business owners and the people who are injured by their actions often have very different views about whether the liability environment is "overly punitive" or whether their lawsuits are, in fact, over "small irrelevant things."
September 15th, 2020 at 1:00 PM ^
1. I'm the medical device (orthopedics) space. We have never been hit with a judgement or anything of the like. We use the same insurance broker we've been using for years, so they shop our policy around for the best rate. When uncertainly and/or risk increase (whether real or perceived), so do the premiums for everyone. So when you create a "sue-happy" environment, everyone feels the pain even if you never get sued.
2. Very true. But that's not saying much. Of course different sides of the argument are going to have opposing views. I know this is anecdotal, but as an UG at Michigan, I worked at a fairly well-know restaurant/bar near downtown, just off main street that typically did not cater to undergrads. I got to know the owners well. Back then, it was very much a "patron-friendly" liability environment, and as such, their insurance premiums were crazy high. They got sued once because some drunk ass while trying to find the bathroom accidentally walked into the storage area (which was supposed to be locked) and thought it would be cool to try and steal some food. Instead he cut his hand on the end of a table which just do happened to have a sharp end that required a bunch of stitches and missed work. Yep, the restaurant paid through the roof on that one. Note: I'm not saying who's right or wrong on this.
September 15th, 2020 at 11:19 AM ^
...and not holding the public responsible for making their decisions to attend; assumption of risk and all.
September 15th, 2020 at 7:33 AM ^
Weekend at Sparty's?
September 15th, 2020 at 7:58 AM ^
Seek professional help.
September 15th, 2020 at 8:05 AM ^
You've now managed to annoy yourself. Congrats!
September 15th, 2020 at 8:50 AM ^
More interesting is the possibility that TPC has at least one puppet account.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:25 AM ^
Is this a RDT level moment we have witnessed here?
September 15th, 2020 at 9:32 AM ^
Hahaha. Only the most seasoned of Mgousers will get this but it's just about as spot on as you can get!
September 15th, 2020 at 12:09 PM ^
RDT wasn't *that* long ago
September 15th, 2020 at 11:02 AM ^
2020 has finally given us a good thing.
September 15th, 2020 at 11:30 AM ^
No. RDT in all his known incarnations disappeared after that particular episode. Sure, he presumably popped up with another account by the end of the day, and we will not be so lucky with PonyConqueror.
Also, RDT was entertaining, and PonyConqueror is just sad.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:31 AM ^
I think he downvoted himself, too. Time to pile on. Negative 10K here we come!
September 15th, 2020 at 9:03 AM ^
So which account did you mean to log into to post this comment?
September 15th, 2020 at 9:24 AM ^
Is he actually RDP (RollDamnPony)?
Hmmmm....
September 15th, 2020 at 9:31 AM ^
Will you ever actually ban him because he keeps doing the same shit you asked him not to do?
September 15th, 2020 at 9:44 AM ^
Busted
You forgot to change tabs lol
September 15th, 2020 at 10:00 AM ^
Don, are you the Pony boy or is that a coincidence? ? Scroll down to Pony’s comment.
https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/colorado-state-coaches-have-told-players-not-report-symptoms-players-and-some-stafee
https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/pac-12-players-threaten-sit-unless-demands-met
September 15th, 2020 at 11:01 AM ^
M Go Cue brought receipts!
This looks like RDT 2.0
September 15th, 2020 at 12:21 PM ^
Always amusing when someone accidentally reveals they're using multiple accounts to reply to themselves. That's a tough look
September 15th, 2020 at 8:10 AM ^
Ohio State nearly complies.
September 15th, 2020 at 8:30 AM ^
We don't care what you do or how you treat your employees - they will not have protection from you! Unless, you know, they can afford to hire a battery of expensive lawyers to out-litigate the business through several rounds of court hearings.
I mean, "reckless, intentional, or willful misconduct" will be impossible to prove without an entire law firm working on your behalf for years on end...
September 15th, 2020 at 9:29 AM ^
It's just as impossible to prove that someone actually caught the virus at some specific location at some specific time. Sure, you might get it after you had to go back to work / to school / etc., but there's no way to be 100% certain that is actually the cause, no matter how likely it may be.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:32 AM ^
It would be difficult to prove where/when/how an infection occurred, but not impossible - especially considering the efforts made now for contact tracing.
September 15th, 2020 at 8:42 AM ^
Sounds a bit similar to the days before Work Comp existed. Just treat your employees like dirt and give them no recourse to rectify the situation!
This must be how the make America great again plan works.
*Proving the exposure occurred during work/school is basically going to be impossible. The employee or student will have to detail their every movement to prove they could not have contracted the virus anywhere else.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:08 AM ^
"Fuck the American People" is our country's new motto
September 15th, 2020 at 9:32 AM ^
New? I'm gonna need you to show your work on this one.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:13 AM ^
Oh good, because when I look around America I think "you know what the problem is? People are taking covid too seriously, and our response has been too good."
September 15th, 2020 at 9:30 AM ^
Bail out corporations, protect employers but the employees, citizens of the country, the people that make these companies what they are, fuck em! What a country we live in!
September 15th, 2020 at 9:49 AM ^
this is standard republican/ capitalist approach. no opinion on right vs wrong, but employers is and always will be strongest voices in politics in our current system
vote for people who will change the lobbying laws if you want this to be different
September 15th, 2020 at 9:38 AM ^
Reckless, intentional or willful are legal terms that are already defined. It is a high threshold to prove. Essentially, the plaintiff would have to show that the business knew of a substantial likelihood of injury (probably the transmission of the disease) but did nothing about it.
Even without this statute, I think it would be a hard hill to climb for a plaintiff. Proving causation would be difficult (but not impossible), there are possibly liable third parties, and the plaintiff probably assumed some risk in patronizing the business.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:50 AM ^
Exactly. Existing laws already made it very difficult to win a lawsuit against a business for covid exposure. Now it's basically impossible.
Fuck Ohio. We need to build a wall.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:50 AM ^
When I was growing up there used to be something called a Union that would represent employees in matters like this.
September 15th, 2020 at 9:56 AM ^
Maybe an MGoLawyer can weigh in here, but this seems like a big "fuck you" to sick workers here.
The key phrases in this bill is "heedless indifference to the consequences" and "substantial and unjustifiable risk" when defining "reckless conduct."
This means that if a business/nonprofit/government/church can show that they made the slightest acknowledgment of the risks and did any kind of cost/benefit, it doesn't matter if that business mandated their employees return to an unhealthy environment.
Example:
Worker: "Your honor, my employer threatened to fire me if I didn't return to work, even though 90% of the company was confirmed COVID positive and there were absolutely zero safety measures taken."
Business: "Here's an email in which we said that while all of that is true, that the revenue estimates made it worthwhile."
Judge: "Case dismissed."
September 15th, 2020 at 10:59 AM ^
Typically, workers' compensation laws govern employee illnesses and injuries. I read this bill as applying to claims by third parties, not employees. Look at section 3(A)(3) and (4). If this bill were intended to remove workers' compensation liability, it probably would have said so.
Also, your example probably meets the "reckless conduct" definition.
September 15th, 2020 at 11:05 AM ^
Eh, more of an f-u to personal injury attorneys who are willing to take cases on contingency and try to squeeze money out of companies regardless of how thoughtful they were with regard to their SHE approach around the virus.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:17 AM ^
Love it! Let businesses run their business and adults make adult decisions about their adult bodies.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:36 AM ^
We tried that. And then management, with at least the tacit approval of the government, hired paramilitaries to murder labor organizers.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:57 AM ^
Except that the adult decisions you make about your adult body can affect someone else's adult body and in turn, other adult bodies they come in contact with but we've been through this before for six + months now and some people still don't understand it.
September 15th, 2020 at 10:35 AM ^
Man, reading some of these comments and it appears that some here either work for really bad companies or have had really bad experiences with their past employers.
Personally, the company I work for has been very good to it’s employees throughout the pandemic. When things went south and stuff shut down they made sure to keep all employees whole with no reduced pay or benefits. They went into their own pockets costing themselves millions of dollars in doing so. A very admirable thing to do. I hope those that aren’t in a similar situation find an employer that would do the same for them.