Personal Injury Attorneys Starting To Get Coronavirus Litigation Questions

While facing a sharp drop in new car wreck cases, Baton Rouge personal injury attorneys are beginning to field a smattering of inquiries about coronavirus-related litigation.

While they aren’t expecting what some in the U.S. predict will be an onslaught of coronavirus legal cases in the coming months, they do expect a substantial number of employees exposed to the virus to file suits against their employers for failing to install proper precautions in the workplace, along with a backlog of contractual disputes between businesses and clients as well as landlords and tenants.

“Unfortunately, I see businesses failing, so contracts won’t be fulfilled, and somebody is going to sue somebody else over it,” says local attorney Darrel Papillion.

“There will be litigation over people not doing what somebody expected them to do, or not paying bills they would otherwise be expected to pay, and some may turn to the governor’s order as a reason why they couldn’t perform."

In the next year, Papillion expects lawsuits tied to bankruptcy, business litigation and labor and employment—and, potentially, family law—to flood the courts. However, for the most part, he doesn’t believe COVID-19 will trigger the “tremendous amount of litigation” that ensued after Hurricane Katrina or the BP oil spill, saying the pandemic is something the world hasn’t experienced in over 100 years.