By Celeste Bott

Law360 (April 9, 2020, 4:18 PM EDT ) States are facing lawsuits amid a push for remote voting in upcoming elections, United Airlines has been sued over refunds for canceled flights, and Walmart was hit with wrongful death claims from the family of a worker fatally infected by the novel coronavirus.

While courts across the country are altering procedures, restricting access and postponing certain cases to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the outbreak has also prompted a wave of new litigation across the country.

Here's a breakdown of some of the COVID-19-related cases from the past week.

Public Policy

The Texas Democratic Party has asked a Western District of Texas judge to declare that the Lone Star State's election code allows for residents following social-distancing orders to vote by mail in the upcoming July primary runoff election and potentially in the November presidential election, according to a complaint filed Tuesday that names Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials as defendants.

And an Illinois voting rights group says in a federal lawsuit that it wants state and local officials to accept electronic signatures on ballot referenda petitions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

To accommodate voters' constitutional rights, the Committee for the Illinois Democracy Amendment, Chairman William Morgan and several others urged a judge to allow and require Secretary of State Jesse White and local officials to accept electronic petition signatures and lessen the number of signatures needed from voters looking to place a question on the November election ballot.

Travel/Transportation

As airlines slash flight schedules in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, United Airlines Inc. violated consumer protection laws by refusing to refund passengers for canceled flights, according to a proposed class action filed Monday in Chicago federal court.

United has refused to issue refunds to passengers after canceling thousands of flights to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to a complaint filed by Jacob Rudolph that alleges the airline violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and consumer protection laws for 49 separate states.

Instead, United will only rebook or provide travel vouchers that expire within a year of the original ticket date, Rudolph said. But that's not good enough, according to the complaint, because all airline passengers are entitled to a ticket refund if their flight is canceled, regardless of what reason the airline gives.

And Spokane, Washington-based owner/operators of a Stay Alfred "travel apartment" in Pittsburgh wrongfully evicted a pair of tenants Tuesday despite a statewide emergency hold on evictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the couple's emergency motion to get back into the apartment.

Stay Alfred, whose website touts "hotel-like" experiences for booking stays in apartments in several cities, announced it was closing its properties and declined to take payment from Victorian Wadsworth and Abber Al-Dulaimi for the apartment in Pittsburgh's Strip District where they had been staying since March 20, then called police to kick them out Tuesday.

On Thursday, a Pennsylvania state judge ordered the tenants to be allowed back into the apartment. A Stay Alfred spokesperson said in a statement Thursday evening that the company had simply been trying to comply with the governor's order in seeking to remove the tenants from the property.

"In this particular instance, we were abiding by the governor's mandated shutdown of all short-term rentals in Pennsylvania," the Stay Alfred spokesperson said.

Small Business

A Michigan strip club sued the Small Business Administration in federal court on Wednesday, claiming the agency violated the Constitution by implementing regulations barring COVID-19 relief loans for establishments that have "live performances of a prurient sexual nature."

DV Diamond Club of Flint LLC, which operates as Little Darlings, said the ban on loans for strip clubs runs afoul of the First and Fifth Amendments because it discriminates against businesses that are abiding by the law.

The strip club said it applied for a loan from the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program included in last month's $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act. The strip club applied for a temporary restraining order to block the SBA from enforcing the regulations, citing a danger of "permanent ruination of its business" if the loan application is rejected or delayed, as the loans are given out on a first-come, first-served basis.

Colorado-based law firm Godfrey Johnson PC, meanwhile, is seeking to block a different provision in the coronavirus relief bill it says could be "catastrophic" for tens of thousands of small businesses.

The firm is taking issue with a rule guiding a provision of the CARES Act that excludes payments to independent contractors from loans intended to help small businesses cover payroll costs during the pandemic. SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza issued the final rule on independent contractor payments April 2.

But the payroll for many businesses, like Godfrey Johnson, consists mostly or entirely of payments to independent contractors, the firm said in an ex parte motion Friday, requesting a temporary restraining order against Carranza. The firm asked the court to accept the motion as its complaint due to the "extreme time constraints" and "sheer magnitude of the damage" associated with the final rule.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Among the conditions cited to explain SoftBank's cancellation of its $3 billion purchase of WeWork shares last week is fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Now, it faces a lawsuit for backing out of the deal.

A WeWork special committee sued SoftBank in Delaware Chancery Court on Tuesday, saying the Japanese investment giant is reaping the benefits of their larger bailout agreement but is now backtracking on its end of the contract.

In a complaint filed in the Chancery Court, attorneys for a special committee of WeWork's board of directors accused SoftBank of breaching their October deal by failing to buy about $3 billion in shares from the workspace-sharing company's stockholders as promised, despite SoftBank already benefiting from their deal by now controlling the company, the committee said.

Trademark Infringement

A COVID-19 test maker has lodged a trademark lawsuit accusing a "nefarious" company of falsely marketing its coronavirus testing kits to consumers, telling a Florida federal court that the kits are not approved for at-home use and were never sold to the company.

CoronaCide LLC alleges in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that Wellness Matrix Group Inc. agent George Todt reached out in February about purchasing its testing kits, but that it expressly rejected the offer after discovering Todt had been "repeatedly sued for fraud."

Undeterred, CoronaCide said, WM Group has been falsely offering CoronaCide's COVID-19 testing kits for use "in the home or at the bedside," swiping entire texts and images from the test maker's materials to advertise the kits on its website.

Insurance

Joining theater and restaurant owners who have filed similar lawsuits in recent weeks, a dental clinic is urging an Illinois federal court to declare that Cincinnati Insurance Co. owes it coverage over the loss of business due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a complaint filed Monday, Sandy Point Dental PC said that after the governor ordered all nonessential businesses closed, Cincinnati wrongfully denied its coverage claim on the grounds that the COVID-19 pandemic didn't constitute physical damage that would trigger the work interruption policy.

The clinic said rather than excluding pandemic-related losses under the insurance policies, it waited to collect premiums and "limits its exposure on the backend."

Energy

A company that develops perk programs for utility companies to purchase for their customers wants more than $22 million in damages from a former business partner who blamed the coronavirus pandemic for failing to enroll new customers in the perks programs and failing to pay monthly program fees.

The lawsuit filed by Energy Earth LLC in Texas on Wednesday accuses Just Energy (US) Corp. of pretext and breaching their agreement.

Continued Legal Trouble for Carnival, Zoom

The wave of cases filed against Carnival and its subsidiaries continues, with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP joining the fight with a fresh California federal lawsuit filed Wednesday against Carnival Corp. on behalf of a group of passengers alleging the company allowed them to board the Grand Princess ship despite knowing passengers from the previous voyage were suffering from coronavirus symptoms.

In March, Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. was hit with three suits related to the voyages that took place on the Grand Princess, including from a South Florida couple who were quarantined on the ship and two quarantined couples seeking $1 million in damages.

Carnival-owned Costa Cruises was hit with another putative class action in Florida on Tuesday alleging it negligently allowed the Costa Luminosa to sail knowing a previous passenger showed symptoms of COVID-19, resulting in 2,000 passengers getting aboard a "ticking coronavirus time bomb."

Video conferencing provider Zoom was hit with a proposed class action Tuesday accusing it of misleading shareholders about the degree of its data privacy and security measures and failing to disclose that its service was not end-to-end encrypted.

Zoom investors were hurt when the company's "inadequate data privacy and security measures" came to light as the global health crisis ramped up and entities started backing off the service, according to the complaint.

The suit comes as Zoom Video Communications Inc., whose virtual meetings are widely relied on by those sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, faces separate litigation and mounting concerns over its data privacy practices.

--Additional reporting by Tiffany Hu, Matt Fair, Lauren Berg, Craig Clough, Vin Gurrieri, Kelly Zegers, Michelle Casady, Mike LaSusa, Hailey Konnath and McCord Pagan. Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.

Update: This article has been updated with Thursday's developments in the Stay Alfred case.

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