Reopened offices raise liability risk for businesses and owners

After offices and other places of business reopen following COVID-19 shutdowns, tenants and owners face increased legal liability, and property insurance plans may not cover this risk.

If an employee or guest contracts the disease, the prospect of a lawsuit puts companies and property owners at risk. Though most re-openings come with stringent measures to protect the health of workers and visitors, those actions may not be enough to protect a company from liability if someone catches COVID-19 within their property.

Companies have to follow the necessary guidelines to safeguard their buildings from COVID-19 transmission, but they also must ensure compliance with those measures, a lawyer interviewed by GlobeSt advises. Plaintiffs would not necessarily have a difficult time proving that they were infected at a particular location.

The prevalence of mobile devices, private security cameras, and other tracking and tracing methods, there could be enough data to determine who was within six feet of an infected person. If businesses adhere to guidelines to prevent disease transmission, though, they stand a much better chance of prevailing in court.