CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The state Senate passed a bill Friday that would provide immunity from civil lawsuits filed in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bill, SB 277, which passed the Senate 25-9, provides blanket immunity from any claim filed against “any person, essential business, business, entity, health care facility, health care provider, first responder, or volunteer for loss, damage, physical injury or death arising from COVID-19, COVID-19 care, or impacted care.”
The provisions of the bill are retroactive to Jan. 1, 2020.
Democrats in the Senate argued against the bill Friday.
Senator Mike Romano, D-Harrison, said he supports the idea of protecting businesses but he’s not sure a law providing blanket immunity is needed.
“A year into the pandemic and we haven’t had one case filed. What does that tell you? There’s not mass litigation,” Romano said.
Senator Richard Lindsay, D-Kanawha, proposed two amendments Friday including language that would allow lawsuits against those “who with actual malice or a conscious, reckless, and outrageous indifference to the health, safety, and welfare of others.”
The proposed amendment was rejected. Lindsay said that makes the bill a bad bill.
“This bill gives license for egregious conduct, malice, reckless indifference and that’s not what we should be about,” Lindsay said.
The Senate rejected a second Lindsay amendment that would have put a sunset date on the bill. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charlie Trump, R-Morgan, said that proposal was premature.
“We don’t have that crystal ball to know when we’re going to be out of the COVID soup, when our economy will have sufficiently and fully recovered. We don’t know that,” Trump said.
Senator Bill Ihlenfeld, D-Ohio, said a handful of other states have passed COVID liability bills but most of those bills have focused on certain areas and not given blanket immunity.
“I generally support this type of a bill,” Ihlenfeld said. “But there should be an exception for gross negligence, for the reckless infliction of harm for the intentional inflection of harm,” he said.
Trump successfully argued the unique legislation is necessary in this unique time.
“This is a global pandemic and it requires extraordinary measures and responses in a lot of different ways,” Trump said.
The bill does allow for workers’ compensation claims to be filed by workers against their employers in connection with the pandemic.
The bill, officially called the COVID-19 Jobs Protection Act, now heads to the House of Delegates for consideration.