By Celeste Bott

Law360 (June 17, 2021, 6:53 PM EDT ) Disney must face discrimination allegations for denying entry to one of its stores to an autistic boy for not wearing a mask, a Princess Cruises passenger has dropped her claims over a COVID-19 outbreak on a ship, and a judge has denied Geico the chance to file an immediate appeal in a suit alleging it's been unfairly profiting off the pandemic by charging high premiums.

While courts across the country have altered procedures, restricted access and postponed certain cases to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the outbreak has also prompted litigation across the country.

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

Employment

A Texas federal judge showed deep skepticism of claims that a Houston hospital was unduly coercing staff to be vaccinated for COVID-19, during a hearing on the hospital's bid to dismiss the challenge to the policy.

An attorney representing 116 employees of Houston Methodist Hospital who have refused the vaccine, Jared Woodfill of Woodfill Law Firm PC, told U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes during the hearing that his clients were being unlawfully coerced by the hospital. Woodfill also told the court several times that the vaccine is experimental, hasn't received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval and is only being administered currently under the agency's emergency use authorization powers.

Judge Hughes continually pushed back on that argument, saying the vaccine "is not an experiment" and that even FDA-approved drugs "are not guaranteed."

A onetime New Jersey health official has said the state has not spelled out a valid reason for his termination and thus should be held liable for allegedly firing him for objecting to collecting COVID-19 test samples from a state official's relatives.

Christopher Neuwirth, formerly an assistant commissioner of the state Department of Health, has called on a state court to grant him partial summary judgment as to New Jersey's liability under the state's Conscientious Employee Protection Act. He is suing the state and related defendants over CEPA and defamation claims.

And Eastern Airlines may have violated the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act by firing an executive shortly after she requested time off to care for her child and mother near the start of the pandemic, but she didn't make a case that the company discriminated against her because she was Black, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick said the emergency federal legislation to address the pandemic had taken effect by late March 2020, when Stephanie Jones asked for flex time or leave to care for her family while schools were closed, so the company should have at least considered her request for unpaid leave rather than fire her. The judge denied Eastern Airlines' motion to dismiss the FFCRA complaint, though he granted dismissal of Jones' claim that the airline discriminated against her because she was Black.

Personal Injury & Medical Malpractice

Two powerful lobbying groups for New York hospitals have asked a federal judge to toss a suit seeking to hold a Long Island nursing home liable for a resident's coronavirus death, saying the repeal of a state law granting nursing homes immunity does not apply retroactively.

The Greater New York Hospital Association and the Healthcare Association of New York State lodged a joint amicus brief asking a New York federal judge to toss a suit accusing Our Lady Of Consolation Nursing And Rehabilitative Care Center of causing the April 2020 death of resident Ana Martinez.

The suit filed by the resident's daughter, Vivian Rivera-Zayas, claims that the West Islip nursing home failed to protect her mother from COVID-19 after she was admitted in January 2020.

A Texas appeals court on Wednesday allowed twin suits to move forward accusing a nursing home of causing two patients' COVID-19 deaths, saying the home raised an improper argument that the suits are preempted by a federal law pertaining to public health emergencies.

A three-judge Fourth Court of Appeals panel unanimously upheld a Bexar County judge's rejection of a dismissal bid lodged by Southeast Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in two suits accusing the nursing home of causing the deaths of patients Ruperto Q. Gutierrez and Catalina Romero.

And a passenger aboard a Princess Cruises ship has dropped her proposed class action in California federal court against the cruise line and parent company Carnival over a COVID-19 outbreak on a voyage that left at least two dead and guests trapped in their cabins.

Lead plaintiff Kathleen O'Neill, a North Carolina resident who claimed she tested positive for COVID-19 just after returning home from her cruise aboard the Coral Princess vessel, on Tuesday dismissed her action against Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. and parent company Carnival Corp. in its entirety. O'Neill's single-page notice of voluntary dismissal with prejudice gave no explanation for why the suit was dropped. 

Media & Entertainment

The Walt Disney Co. can't escape claims it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act when it barred an autistic boy from a store for not wearing a mask, a Pennsylvania federal judge ruled Tuesday, saying the boy's mother showed waiving the mask rule was reasonable and necessary.

Shea Emanuel said Disney was wrong to deny her son entry last year to a Disney Store in a mall in Whitehall, Pennsylvania, for not adhering to the store's pandemic policy. Emanuel said her 7-year-old son, called N.B. in the suit, can't wear a mask due to his autism and that she decided she wouldn't force him to wear a face covering in public.

Disney in January moved to toss the suit, arguing that Emanuel's request for her son was not reasonable, that she hadn't shown the requested modification was necessary for her son to access its store and that her request to waive the mask requirement poses a threat to the health of Disney's other guests and employees.

Health Care

A Peruvian medical equipment wholesaler who claims it was duped into buying counterfeit 3M-branded masks during the pandemic has told a Florida federal judge that the alleged North American arm of a German product-testing company can't seek dismissal because it isn't a party to the suit.

THI Medical SAC, based in Santiago de Surco, Peru, said that TÜV Rheinland of North America Inc. has no right to move for dismissal of the lawsuit because it isn't named in the dispute nor has it shown that its alleged parent company, TÜV Rheinland Group, can't be the entity responsible for responding to the suit.

THI sued Filmore Management Trading LLC and TÜV Rheinland Group in April, alleging that Filmore knowingly sold the Peruvian company $1.7 million worth of counterfeit 3M-branded medical masks as the deadly coronavirus swept around the world. The company said TÜV prepared a fraudulent inspection report, falsely confirming that the masks were authentic.

Public Policy 

A suit targeting a Trump-era rule restricting coronavirus aid for foreign students has been dropped after the Biden administration rescinded the rule on May 14, according to a notice of voluntary dismissal filed in California federal court.

The federal government also last month dropped an appeal of a preliminary injunction issued in June 2020 by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, which the group of plaintiffs, including the California Community Colleges, noted as further reason to drop the lawsuit without prejudice.

In June 2020, then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a formal rule preventing students who are not eligible for federal financial aid grants — including beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, veterans and students with disabilities — from accessing the COVID-19 aid.

And Florida's First District has revived a resident's bid for an emergency injunction to block Alachua County's COVID-19 mask mandate, finding in a split decision that the trial court failed to apply the proper review based on privacy rights in the state constitution.

Although two of the three judges on the appellate panel found that the Florida Supreme Court's 2017 decision in Gainesville Woman Care LLC v. State meant that the lower court should have applied strict scrutiny and required the county to prove the measure was narrowly tailored to address a compelling governmental interest, the controversial issue significantly divided the court, with all three judges taking distinct positions in separate opinions.

In New York, a federal judge has denied a motion by a trade group and several small landlords to block enforcement of a state law preventing most pandemic-era residential evictions, finding that the plaintiffs' constitutional violation arguments are not likely to succeed.

U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown issued the order in favor of the defendant, New York Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence K. Marks, saying that state laws — like the COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act, or CEEFPA, at issue here — are not generally susceptible to due process claims.

Tax

Ohio's challenge of a federal law prohibiting states from using pandemic aid to offset tax cuts should be tossed because the first stop for such disputes is a proceeding to recoup aid, the U.S. Treasury Department has told a federal court.

In a reply brief, the Treasury told the Southern District of Ohio that the state's challenge to the American Rescue Plan Act's provision that bars states from using federal aid to offset net revenue reductions, or risk having to return the funds, lacked standing.

The state of Massachusetts told the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday that it will wind down its controversial rules requiring nonresidents to continue sourcing their wages to the state if they telecommuted from out of state due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a supplemental brief, Massachusetts said the end of its state of emergency Tuesday will mean the end of a state tax regulation that imposed an income tax on nonresident workers who used to work in the state but subsequently telecommuted from out of state during the pandemic.

And a Pennsylvania resident's challenge to an Ohio law allowing cities to impose local income taxes on employees working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic should be dismissed, the city of Cleveland said, arguing Ohio is authorized to enact the disputed policy.

The challenge by Manal Morsy, a resident of the Philadelphia suburb Blue Bell who works for a Cleveland company, is meritless because the law does not violate due process and Morsy falls under personal jurisdiction in Cleveland, the city told the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. The Ohio General Assembly is authorized to allocate municipal income tax between jurisdictions, the city said, asking the court to dismiss Morsy's challenge.

And an Ohio man on Wednesday appealed a judge's dismissal of his constitutional challenge to a state law allowing cities to tax remote workers in other municipalities during the pandemic, the latest development in a string of cases over the statute.

The Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday tossed a case from Josh Schaad, a Blue Ash resident who asked the court to compel Cincinnati to issue him a refund of income taxes withheld in 2020 for days when he worked from home. Schaad's counsel, Robert Alt, president of the Buckeye Institute, a free-market research organization, announced Wednesday that a notice of appeal to the state' First District Court of Appeals had been filed.

Insurance

An Illinois federal judge on Monday denied Geico's effort to certify an interlocutory appeal in a suit alleging Geico has been unfairly profiting off the COVID-19 pandemic by charging "unconscionably excessive" premiums. U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said Geico failed to establish how an interlocutory appeal would accelerate the litigation process when its own online statement could have deceived customers by overcharging premiums when people were not regularly on the road during the lockdown last year.

State Farm has asked a Louisiana federal judge to throw out a New Orleans restaurant's COVID-19 insurance coverage suit, urging the court to follow other federal courts' rulings that have "uniformly" held that the virus and resulting government orders do not cause property damage.

A group of California hotel companies asked the Ninth Circuit on Monday to reverse Hartford Fire Insurance's summary judgment win over their COVID-19 coverage suit, arguing that the lower court misinterpreted their policy with an "improper liberal application" of a virus exclusion.

Also before the Ninth Circuit, a Nevada advertising agency asked the appellate court to revive its bid for coverage of losses sustained because of government pandemic restrictions, saying the district court misinterpreted a key requirement for coverage in favor of a Chubb unit.

A Connecticut state judge freed an insurance unit of The Hartford from having to cover shoe designer Marc Fisher Footwear's pandemic losses, saying Tuesday that the policyholder failed to show its shoe products were physically harmed and granting summary judgment Tuesday to Hartford Fire Insurance Co.

Also on Tuesday, a New Hampshire-based hotel company and its affiliates were granted partial summary judgment in their business interruption suit with insurers when a state judge ruled Tuesday that damage caused by the presence of the coronavirus was a "direct physical loss or damage" to the hotels, triggering business interruption coverage for Schleicher and Stebbins Hotels LLC and its affiliates, which look to tap into part of a $600 million tower of insurance for losses. 

And on the heels of a ruling in three bellwether cases in multidistrict litigation over Society Insurance Co.'s widespread denial of pandemic-related coverage, an Illinois federal judge on Tuesday refused the insurer's bid for an appeal concerning claims for business interruption coverage.

A commercial landlord in Los Angeles has sued a Travelers unit in California federal court for refusing to help cover more than $1.8 million in rental losses sustained because of the coronavirus pandemic. The owner, JC/SC LLC, accused Travelers Indemnity Co. of Connecticut of breaching its insurance agreements by refusing coverage on the grounds that the virus did not cause direct physical loss or damage to the company's properties. 

A Florida investment organization that owns hotels and restaurants can't tap into coverage with Zurich, a federal judge has ruled, saying losses from the COVID-19 pandemic and government closure orders didn't cause property damage. U.S. District Judge Kevin Michael Moore freed Zurich American Insurance Co. from having to cover Spottswood Cos. Inc.'s alleged losses, saying the policyholder failed to show how the coronavirus and the pandemic physically affected its covered properties.

--Additional reporting by Daphne Zhang, Craig Clough, Eli Flesch, Shawn Rice, Michelle Casady, Nathan Hale, Y. Peter Kang, Abraham Gross, Emma Whitford, Lauren Berg, Dean Seal, Daniel Tay, Matthew Santoni, Bill Wichert, Paul Williams and Joyce Hanson. Editing by Kelly Duncan.

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