By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri health care workers, first responders, businesses, even churches would be shielded from civil liability lawsuits under a bill passing the last day of the legislative session.
State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville sponsored the measure and had to wait out House action on the bill as the legislation stalled before ultimately passing with no time to spare.
“The fact is in Jefferson City things get leveraged, they get used and traded away,” Luetkemeyer tells St. Joseph Post. “The Speaker of the House obviously knew that the COVID liability bill was a big priority for the governor and for the Senate. And so, I think one of the reasons the House sat on it for so long is they were attempting to use it for leverage to get other things that were priorities for them to move.”
Under the legislation, manufacturers, small businesses, health care workers, and others that act in good faith would not be subject to lawsuits resulting from COVID-19 exposure.
Luetkemeyer calls it a comprehensive bill that will shield those who acted in good faith to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“It is going to protect small business owners. It protects frontline health care workers. It protects school districts. It protects churches,” according to Luetkemeyer. “When they are in the process of reopening, they’re not going to have liability, absent recklessness, for someone contracting COVID-19 whenever they’re on the premises of that business or that school.”
Luetkemeyer says the exposure to such lawsuits is a very real threat, claiming some law firms are already soliciting such complaints.
“Certainly, there are cases pending in Missouri,” Luetkemeyer says. “There are certainly cases that are being threatened in Missouri that have not yet been filed and so I think the risk is very real that these lawsuits are coming. But also, just the threat of that type of litigation out there and the chilling effect that that has on businesses and their willingness to fully reopen; that can’t be discounted, either.”
Luetkemeyer says it’s important to shield businesses as they re-open and the economy begins to emerge from coronavirus-inspired restrictions. He says his bill is modeled after proposed federal legislation that stalled in Washington.
The bill, Senate Bill 51, now awaits the governor’s signature.