Employers in California are not legally responsible for preventing the spread of COVID-19 from their employees to the employees' family members, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
Workers' compensation laws in the state do not preclude such claims, the court found. But companies also cannot be held legally responsible for preventing such infections, it said, given the tremendous burden such a requirement would place — not just on the companies, but on the courts and on society as a whole.
That is true even in cases in which an individual company may have shown negligence by failing to adhere to established health and safety standards, the court said.
