One less-discussed thing to come from the pandemic has been employment-related lawsuits — thousands of them. Many of these complaints have failed. Others will change the way you do business, write contracts and oversee your employees.
Theresa Connolly, co-managing partner of Fisher & Phillips LLP’s D.C.-area offices in McLean and Bethesda, shared some of her firm’s research into this issue. According to its Covid-19 employment litigation tracker, here are some numbers that stand out locally and nationally:
The issues to watch
So how might Covid change the law as it applies to employers and their employees? We asked experts at 12 local firms to share which Covid-related lawsuit trends they’ve seen the most, and where they expect things to go from here. Some of the legal questions that arose during the pandemic are still being hashed out in courtrooms and boardrooms, but here’s what they had to say.
Challenges that didn't work
Not every legal claim gets far, of course. Here are a few types that attorneys said either didn’t pan out or otherwise never amounted to much.
• “You gave me Covid!” – At the start of the pandemic, employers were concerned about being sued if either an employee, customer or client contracted the virus after an interaction. “But those lawsuits never appeared en masse,” said Holland & Knight LLP Partner Timothy Taylor. Timothy Hughes, managing shareholder for Bean Kinney & Korman PC, agreed, saying, “Given its ubiquity and difficulties in...
Artificial intelligence tools have been a double-edged sword in Operation Epic Fury—both helping to spread disinformation, and helping to clear it up. On Thursday afternoon, the United States Cent...