The COVID Project
The record
- Jurisdiction
- California
- Level
- Court
- Authority
- Civil Code section 1714; Labor Code sections 3600, 3602; the City and County of San Francisco health officer's order of April 29, 2020 (construction jobsite requirements); Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.548 (questions certified by the Ninth Circuit)
- Issued
- 2023-07-06 July 6, 2023
- Effective
- 2023-07-06
- End
- n/a (judicial decision; describes the regime of 2020)
- In force
- July 6, 2023 (no end date recorded; counted as in force for 120 days)
- Limitation types
- Workplace rulesStanding duty
- Addressees
- employers (permitted to continue operating under the health orders)
- Character
- adjudication
- Collection
- Standing duties: California DUT-CA
Operative words
employers allowed to continue operations during this time were subject to strict regulations designed to limit transmission of the virus. As relevant here, the City and County of San Francisco's April 29, 2020 health order mandated specific health and safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at construction jobsites.... does not exempt Victory from the default duty to use due care
Penalty
Civil liability to employees under Civil Code section 1714 and workers' compensation; the court held no tort duty to nonemployee household members.
What it required
The State's highest court, describing the legal position of an employer permitted to keep operating in 2020, held that such employers 'were subject to strict regulations' whose 'mandated' precautions included daily symptom screening, distancing 'except as strictly necessary for the work', immediate removal of infected workers and sanitizing of their areas, staggered trades, personal protective equipment and ventilation, and that the employer remained under the general duty of due care to avoid foreseeable injury; the court declined to extend that duty to household members on policy grounds. Character as recorded: adjudication (workplace duty construed).
Retrieval noteThe court's own slip opinion; the reporter citation 14 Cal.5th 993 is from secondary sources and should be pin-checked. The passage quoted is at p. 31 of the slip opinion (Part II.C, foreseeability), where the court analogizes the health orders to the OSHA asbestos standards in Kesner: 'government health orders notified employers of the reasonable foreseeability that COVID-19 could be transmitted not only within the workplace but also to individuals who came into contact with infected employees.' Footnote 9 records that plaintiffs contended 'the county's health order provides the appropriate standard of care' and that the court did not reach whether the order created a freestanding duty to household members. The facts recite that the employer transferred workers to the jobsite 'without taking precautions required by the county's health order' and that 'employers like Victory were required to' take the listed measures. Decided after Q3 2021; cited as the highest California authority describing the compulsory character of the 2020 workplace regime.