Legislation and a pending lawsuit could make big changes in California’s workers’ compensation system for job-related illnesses and injuries.
— Read on calmatters.org/commentary/2021/09/workers-compensation-lawsuit-labor-employers/
a lawsuit filed against See’s Candies, a century-old California institution, could make an even more fundamental change in the workers’ compensation system and its “exclusive remedy” provision.
Matilde Ek, a worker at a See’s distribution center in Southern California, contracted COVID-19 and apparently infected her 72-year-old husband, Arturo, who died. Ek said she worked on the See’s packing line without proper social distancing or other protections even though some workers were coughing, sneezing and showing other signs of COVID-19 infections.
She and her daughters sued See’s, alleging that since her workplace lacked sufficient safeguards against infection, the company is liable for his death.
See’s, now owned by billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Corp., acknowledged that Ek’s illness was job-related but argued that since it was, the company was protected from liability for her husband’s death under the “exclusive remedy” doctrine.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Daniel M. Crowley refused, however, to throw out Ek’s lawsuit, agreeing with Ek’s attorney that her husband’s death was a separate event from her workplace infection.
Crowley’s ruling sent the issue into the appellate courts and it’s drawing attention from major California and national business groups, which see it as potentially undermining a bedrock principle of the workers’ compensation system.