Public Nuisance Claims Emerge In COVID-19 Workplace Litigation Filings

In addition to other trends Barnes & Thornburg’s Wage and Hour Practice Group is monitoring, this week, we noted the filing of several somewhat novel COVID-19 related workplace complaints as we compiled cases in our tracker. There seems to be an emerging trend in which the employer’s failure to implement COVID-19 safety guidelines gives rise to public nuisance claims. Perhaps not surprisingly, each of these cases arose in the state of California, and have a California Labor Code class action component as well. This is consistent with the observation we blogged about last week, that the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have acted as an accelerant for wage and hour cases. This is another trend for employers to be mindful of, and one we continue to monitor.